Transcriber Notes:

 1. Several misprints corrected. A complete list of corrections may be found at the end of the text. 

 2. Symbol of a hand pointing right has been replaced with a right arrow: ==>. 

 HOW TO SUCCEED;

 OR, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune. 

 [Illustration]

 . .. BY. .. 

 ORISON SWETT MARDEN, A. M. , M. D. 

 Author of

 "Pushing to the Front; or, Success Under Difficulties, " and "Architects of Fate; or, Steps to Success and Power. "

 * * * * *

 PUBLISHED BY THE CHRISTIAN HERALD, LOUIS KLOPSCH, Proprietor, BIBLE HOUSE, NEW YORK. 

 Copyright, 1896, BY LOUIS KLOPSCH. 

CONTENTS

 CHAPTER. PAGE. 

 I. First, Be a Man, 5 II. Seize Your Opportunity, 14 III. How Did He Begin? 27 IV. Out of Place, 49 V. What Shall I Do? 58 VI. Will You Pay the Price? 66 VII. Foundation Stones, 81 VIII. The Conquest of Obstacles, 99 IX. Dead in Earnest, 115 X. To Be Great, Concentrate, 128 XI. At Once, 140 XII. Thoroughness, 149 XIII. Trifles, 160 XIV. Courage, 169 XV. Will Power, 183 XVI. Guard Your Weak Point, 192 XVII. Stick, 209 XVIII. Save, 220 XIX. Live Upward, 229 XX. Sand, 238 XXI. Above Rubies, 256 XXII. Moral Sunshine, 275 XXIII. Hold Up Your Head, 287 XXIV. Books and Success, 296 XXV. Riches Without Wings, 318

HOW TO SUCCEED. 

CHAPTER I. 

FIRST, BE A MAN. 

 The great need at this hour is manly men. We want no goody-goody piety; we have too much of it. We want men who will do right, though the heavens fall, who believe in God, and who will confess Him. --REV. W. J. DAWSON. 

 All the world cries, Where is the man who will save us? We want a man! Don't look so far for this man. You have him at hand. This man--it is you, it is I; it is each one of us!. .. How to constitute one's self a man? Nothing harder, if one knows not how to will it; nothing easier, if one wills it. --ALEXANDER DUMAS. 

"I thank God I am a Baptist, " said a little, short Doctor of Divinity, as he mounted a step at a convention. "Louder! louder!" shouted a man inthe audience; "we can't hear. " "Get up higher, " said another. "I can't, "replied the doctor, "to be a Baptist is as high as one can get. "

But there is something higher than being a Baptist, and that is being a_man_. 

Rousseau says: "According to the order of nature, men being equal, theircommon vocation is the profession of humanity; and whoever is welleducated to discharge the duty of a man cannot be badly prepared tofill any of those offices that have a relation to him. It matters littleto me whether my pupil be designed for the army, the pulpit, or the bar. To live is the profession I would teach him. When I have done with him, it is true he will be neither a soldier, a lawyer, nor a divine. _Lethim first be a man_; Fortune may remove him from one rank to another, asshe pleases, he will be always found in his place. "

"First of all, " replied the boy James A. Garfield, when asked what hemeant to be, "I must make myself a man; if I do not succeed in that, Ican succeed in nothing. "

"Hear me, O men, " cried Diogenes, in the market place at Athens; and, when a crowd collected around him, he said scornfully, "I called formen, not pigmies. "

One great need of the world to-day is for men and women who are goodanimals. To endure the strain of our concentrated civilization, thecoming man and woman must have an excess of animal spirits. They musthave a robustness of health. Mere absence of disease is not health. Itis the overflowing fountain, not the one half full, that gives life andbeauty to the valley below. Only he is healthy who exults in mere animalexistence; whose very life is a luxury; who feels a bounding pulsethroughout his body; who feels life in every limb, as dogs do whenscouring over the field, or as boys do when gliding over fields of ice. 

Dispense with the doctor by being temperate; the lawyer by keeping outof debt; the demagogue, by voting for honest men; and poverty, by beingindustrious. 

"Nephew, " said Sir Godfrey Kneller, the artist, to a Guinea slavetrader, who entered the room where his uncle was talking with AlexanderPope, "you have the honor of seeing the two greatest men in the world. ""I don't know how great men you may be, " said the Guinea man, as helooked contemptuously upon their diminutive physical proportions, "but Idon't like your looks; I have often bought a much better man than eitherof you, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas. "

A man is never so happy as when he suffices to himself, and can walkwithout crutches or a guide. Said Jean Paul Richter: "I have made asmuch out of myself as could be made of the stuff, and no man shouldrequire more. "

"The body of an athlete and the soul of a sage, " wrote Voltaire toHelvetius; "these are what we require to be happy. "

Although millions are out of employment in the United States, howdifficult it is to find a thorough, reliable, self-dependent, industrious man or woman, young or old, for any position, whether as adomestic servant, an office boy, a teacher, a brakeman, a conductor, anengineer, a clerk, a bookkeeper, or whatever we may want. It is almostimpossible to find a really _competent_ person in any department, andoftentimes we have to make many trials before we can get a positionfairly well filled. 

It is a superficial age; very few prepare for their work. Of thousandsof young women trying to get a living at typewriting, many are soignorant, so deficient in the common rudiments even, that they spellbadly, use bad grammar, and know scarcely anything of punctuation. Infact, they murder the English language. They can copy, "parrot like, "and that is about all. 

The same superficiality is found in nearly all kinds of business. It isnext to impossible to get a first-class mechanic; he has not learned histrade; he has picked it up, and botches everything he touches, spoilinggood material and wasting valuable time. 

In the professions, it is true, we find greater skill and faithfulness, but usually they have been developed at the expense of mental and moralbreadth. 

The merely professional man is narrow; worse than that, he is in a sensean artificial man, a creature of technicalities and specialties, removedalike from the broad truth of nature and from the healthy influence ofhuman converse. In society, the most accomplished man of mereprofessional skill is often a nullity; he has sunk his personality inhis dexterity. 

"The aim of every man, " said Humboldt, "should be to secure the highestand most harmonious development of his powers to a complete andconsistent whole. "

Some men impress us as immense possibilities. They seem to have a sweepof intellect that is grand; a penetrative power that is phenomenal; theyseem to know everything, to have read everything, to have seeneverything. Nothing seems to escape the keenness of their vision. Butsomehow they are forever disappointing our expectations. They raisegreat hopes only to dash them. They are men of great promise, but theynever pay. There is some indefinable want in their make-up. 

What the world needs is a clergyman who is broader than his pulpit, whodoes not look upon humanity with a white neckcloth ideal, and who wouldgive the lie to the saying that the human race is divided into threeclasses: men, women and ministers. Wanted, a clergyman who does not lookupon his congregation from the standpoint of old theological books, anddusty, cobweb creeds, but who sees the merchant as in his store, theclerk as making sales, the lawyer pleading before the jury, thephysician standing over the sick bed; in other words, who looks upon thegreat throbbing, stirring, pulsing, competing, scheming, ambitious, impulsive, tempted, mass of humanity as one of their number, who canlive with them, see with their eyes, hear with their ears, andexperience their sensations. 

The world has a standing advertisement over the door of everyprofession, every occupation, every calling: "Wanted--A Man. "

Wanted, a lawyer, who has not become the victim of his specialty, a merewalking bundle of precedents. 

Wanted, a shopkeeper who does not discuss markets wherever he goes. Aman should be so much larger than his calling, so broad and symmetricalin his culture, that he would not talk shop in society, that no onewould suspect how he gets his living. 

Nothing is more apparent in this age of specialties than the dwarfing, crippling, mutilating influence of occupations or professions. Specialties facilitate commerce, and promote efficiency in theprofessions, but are often narrowing to individuals. The spirit of theage tends to doom the lawyer to a narrow life of practice, the businessman to a mere money-making career. 

Think of a man, the grandest of God's creations, spending his life-timestanding beside a machine for making screws. There is nothing to callout his individuality, his ingenuity, his powers of balancing, judging, deciding. 

He stands there year after year, until he seems but a piece ofmechanism. His powers, from lack of use, dwindle to mediocrity, toinferiority, until finally he becomes a mere part of the machine hetends. 

Wanted, a man who will not lose his individuality in a crowd, a man whohas the courage of his convictions, who is not afraid to say "No, "though all the world say "Yes. "

Wanted, a man who, though he is dominated by a mighty purpose, will notpermit one great faculty to dwarf, cripple, warp, or mutilate hismanhood; who will not allow the over-development of one faculty to stuntor paralyze his other faculties. 

Wanted, a man who is larger than his calling, who considers it a lowestimate of his occupation to value it merely as a means of getting aliving. Wanted, a man who sees self-development, education and culture, discipline and drill, character and manhood, in his occupation. 

As Nature tries every way to induce us to obey her laws by rewardingtheir observance with health, pleasure and happiness, and punishes theirviolation by pain and disease, so she resorts to every means to induceus to expand and develop the great possibilities she has implantedwithin us. She nerves us to the struggle, beneath which all greatblessings are buried, and beguiles the tedious marches by holding upbefore us glittering prizes, which we may almost touch, but never quitepossess. She covers up her ends of discipline by trial, of characterbuilding through suffering by throwing a splendor and glamour over thefuture; lest the hard, dry facts of the present dishearten us, and shefail in her great purpose. How else could Nature call the youth awayfrom all the charms that hang around young life, but by presenting tohis imagination pictures of future bliss and greatness which will haunthis dreams until he resolves to make them real. As a mother teaches herbabe to walk, by holding up a toy at a distance, not that the child mayreach the toy, but that it may develop its muscles and strength, compared with which the toys are mere baubles; so Nature goes before usthrough life, tempting us with higher and higher toys, but ever with oneobject in view--the development of the man. 

In every great painting of the masters there is one idea or figure whichstands out boldly beyond everything else. Every other idea or figure onthe canvas is subordinate to this idea or figure, and finds its realsignificance not in itself, but, pointing to the central idea, finds itstrue expression there. So in the vast universe of God, every object ofcreation is but a guide-board with an index finger pointing to thecentral figure of the created universe--Man. Nature writes this thoughtupon every leaf; she thunders it in every creation; it exhales fromevery flower; it twinkles in every star. 

 Open thy bosom, set thy wishes wide, And let in manhood--let in happiness; Admit the boundless theatre of thought From nothing up to God . .. Which makes a man! --YOUNG. 

CHAPTER II. 

SEIZE YOUR OPPORTUNITY. 

 "The blowing winds are but our servants When we hoist a sail. "

 You must come to know that each admirable genius is but a successful diver in that sea whose floor of pearls is all your own. --EMERSON. 

 Who waits until the wind shall silent keep, Who never finds the ready hour to sow, Who watcheth clouds, will have no time to reap. --HELEN HUNT JACKSON. 

 The secret of success in life is for a man _to be ready for his opportunity_ when it comes. --DISRAELI. 

 Do the best you can where you are; and, when that is accomplished, God will open a door for you, and a voice will call, "Come up hither into a higher sphere. " --BEECHER. 

 Our grand business is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. --CARLYLE. 

"When I was a boy, " said General Grant, "my mother one morning foundherself without butter for breakfast, and sent me to borrow some from aneighbor. Going into the house without knocking, I overheard a letterread from the son of a neighbor, who was then at West Point, statingthat he had failed in examination and was coming home. I got the butter, took it home, and, without waiting for breakfast ran to the office ofthe congressman for our district. 'Mr. Hamer, ' I said, 'will youappoint me to West Point?' 'No, ---- is there, and has three years toserve. ' 'But suppose he should fail, will you send me?' Mr. Hamerlaughed. 'If he don't go through, no use for you to try, Uly. ' 'Promiseme you will give me the chance, Mr. Hamer, anyhow. ' Mr. Hamer promised. The next day the defeated lad came home, and the congressman, laughingat my sharpness, gave me the appointment. Now, " said Grant, "it was mymother's being without butter that made me general and president. " Buthe was mistaken. It was his own shrewdness to see the chance, and thepromptness to seize it, that urged him upward. 

"There is nobody, " says a Roman Cardinal, "whom Fortune does not visitonce in his life; but when she finds he is not ready to receive her, shegoes in at the door, and out through the window. " Opportunity is coy. The careless, the slow, the unobservant, the lazy fail to see it, orclutch at it when it has gone. The sharp fellows detect it instantly, and catch it when on the wing. 

The utmost which can be said about the matter is, that circumstanceswill, and do combine to help men at some periods of their lives, andcombine to thwart them at others. Thus much we freely admit; but thereis no fatality in these combinations, neither any such thing as "luck"or "chance, " as commonly understood. They come and go like all otheropportunities and occasions in life, and if they are seized upon andmade the most of, the man whom they benefit is fortunate; but if theyare neglected and allowed to pass by unimproved, he is unfortunate. 

"Charley, " says Moses H. Grinnell to a clerk born in New York City, "take my overcoat tip to my house on Fifth Avenue. " Mr. Charley takesthe coat, mutters something about "I'm not an errand boy. I came here tolearn business, " and moves reluctantly. Mr. Grinnell sees it, and at thesame time one of his New England clerks says, "I'll take it up. " "Thatis right, do so, " says Mr. G. , and to himself he says, "that boy issmart, he will work, " and he gives him plenty to do. He gets promoted, gets the confidence of business men as well as of his employers, and issoon known as a successful man. 

The youth who starts out in life determined to make the most of his eyesand let nothing escape him which he can possibly use for his ownadvancement, who keeps his ears open for every sound that can help himon his way, who keeps his hands open that he may clutch everyopportunity, who is ever on the alert for everything which can help himto get on in the world, who seizes every experience in life and grindsit up into paint for his great life's picture, who keeps his heart openthat he may catch every noble impulse and everything which may inspirehim, will be sure to live a successful life; there are no ifs or andsabout it. If he has his health, nothing can keep him from success. 

_Zion's Herald_ says that Isaac Rich, who gave one million and threequarters to found Boston University of the Methodist Episcopal Church, began business thus: at eighteen he went from Cape Cod to Boston withthree or four dollars in his possession, and looked about for somethingto do, rising early, walking far, observing closely, reflecting much. Soon he had an idea: he bought three bushels of oysters, hired awheelbarrow, found a piece of board, bought six small plates, six ironforks, a three-cent pepper-box, and one or two other things. He was atthe oyster-boat buying his oysters at three o'clock in the morning, wheeled them three miles, set up his board near a market, and beganbusiness. He sold out his oysters as fast as he could get them, at agood profit. In that same market he continued to deal in oysters andfish for forty years, became king of the business, and ended by foundinga college. His success was won by industry and honesty. 

"Give me a chance, " says Haliburton's Stupid, "and I will show you. " Butmost likely he has had his chance already and neglected it. 

"Well, boys, " said Mr. A. , a New York merchant, to his four clerks onewinter morning in 1815, "this is good news. Peace has been declared. Now_we_ must be up and doing. We shall have our hands full, but we can doas much as anybody. "

He was owner and part owner of several ships lying dismantled during thewar, three miles up the river, which was covered with ice an inch thick. He knew that it would be a month before the ice yielded for the season, and that thus the merchants in other towns where the harbors were open, would have time to be in the foreign markets before him. His decisiontherefore was instantly taken. 

"Reuben, " he continued, addressing one of his clerks, "go and collect asmany laborers as possible to go up the river. Charles, do you findMr. ----, the rigger, and Mr. ----, the sailmaker, and tell them I wantthem immediately. John, engage half-a-dozen truckmen for to-day andto-morrow. Stephen, do you hunt up as many gravers and caulkers as youcan, and hire them to work for me. " And Mr. A. Himself sallied forth toprovide the necessary implements for icebreaking. Before twelve o'clockthat day, upward of an hundred men were three miles up the river, clearing the ships and cutting away ice, which they sawed out in largesquares, and then thrust under the main mass to open up the channel. Theroofing over the ships was torn off, and the clatter of the caulkers'mallets was like to the rattling of a hail-storm, loads of rigging werepassed up on the ice, riggers went to and fro with belt and knife, sailmakers busily plied their needles, and the whole presented anunusual scene of stir and activity and well-directed labor. Before nightthe ships were afloat, and moved some distance down the channel; and bythe time they had reached the wharf, namely, in some eight or ten days, their rigging and spars were aloft, their upper timbers caulked, andeverything ready for them to go to sea. 

Thus Mr. A. Competed on equal terms with the merchants of open seaports. Large and quick gains rewarded his enterprise, and then his neighborsspoke depreciatingly of his "good luck. " But, as the writer from whom weget the story says, Mr. A. Was equal to his opportunity, and this wasthe secret of his good fortune. 

A Baltimore lady lost a valuable diamond bracelet at a ball, andsupposed it was stolen from the pocket of her cloak. Years afterward, she walked the streets near the Peabody Institute to get money topurchase food. She cut up an old, worn out, ragged cloak to make a hoodof, when lo! in the lining of the cloak, she discovered the diamondbracelet. During all her poverty she was worth thirty-five hundreddollars, but did not know it. 

Many of us who think we are poor are rich in opportunities if we couldonly see them, in possibilities all about us, in faculties worth morethan diamond bracelets, in power to do good. 

In our large eastern cities it has been found that at least ninety-fourout of every hundred found their first fortune at home, or near at hand, and in meeting common everyday wants. It is a sorry day for a young manwho cannot see any opportunities where he is, but thinks he can dobetter somewhere else. Several Brazilian shepherds organized a party togo to California to dig gold, and took along a handful of clear pebblesto play checkers with on the voyage. They discovered after arriving atSacramento, after they had thrown most of the pebbles away, that theywere all diamonds. They returned to Brazil only to find that the mineshad been taken up by others and sold to the government. 

The richest gold and silver mine in Nevada was sold for forty-twodollars by the owner, to get money to pay his passage to other mineswhere he thought he could get rich. 

Professor Agassiz told the Harvard students of a farmer who owned a farmof hundreds of acres of unprofitable woods and rocks, and concluded tosell out and try some more remunerative business. 

He studied coal measures and coal oil deposits, and experimented for along time. He sold his farm for two hundred dollars and went into theoil business two hundred miles away. Only a short time afterward the manwho bought the farm discovered a great flood of coal oil, which thefarmer had ignorantly tried to drain off. 

A man was once sitting in an uncomfortable chair in Boston talking witha friend as to what he could do to help mankind. "I should think itwould be a good thing, " said the friend, "to begin by getting up aneasier and cheaper chair. "

"I will do it, " he exclaimed, leaping up and examining the chair. Hefound a great deal of rattan thrown away by the East India merchantships, whose cargoes were wrapped in it. He began the manufacture ofrattan chairs and other furniture, and has astonished the world by whathe has done with what was before thrown away. While this man wasdreaming about some far off success, he at that very time had fortuneawaiting only his ingenuity and industry. 

If you want to get rich, study yourself and your own wants. You willfind millions of others have the same wants, the same demands. Thesafest business is always connected with men's prime necessities. Theymust have clothing, dwellings; they must eat. They want comforts, facilities of all kinds, for use and pleasure, luxury, education, culture. Any man who can supply a great want of humanity, improve anymethods which men use, supply any demand or contribute in any way totheir well-being, can make a fortune. 

But it is detrimental to the highest success to undertake anythingmerely because it is profitable. If the vocation does not supply a humanwant, if it is not healthful, if it is degrading, if it is narrowing, don't touch it. 

A selfish vocation never pays. If it belittles the manhood, blights theaffections, dwarfs the mental life, chills the charities and shrivelsthe soul, don't touch it. Choose that occupation, if possible, whichwill be the most helpful to the largest number. 

It is estimated that five out of every seven of the millionairemanufacturers began by making with their own hands the articles on whichthey made their fortune. 

One of the greatest hindrances to advancement and promotion in life isthe lack of observation and the disinclination to take pains. A keen, cultivated observation will see a fortune where others see only poverty. An observing man, the eyelets of whose shoes pulled out, but who couldill afford to get another pair, said to himself, "I will make a metalliclacing hook, which can be riveted into the leather. " He succeeded indoing so and now he is a very rich man. 

An observing barber in Newark, N. J. , thought he could make animprovement on shears for cutting hair, and invented "clippers" andbecame very rich. A Maine man was called from the hayfield to wash outthe clothes for his invalid wife. He had never realized what it was towash before. He invented the washing-machine and made a fortune. A manwho was suffering terribly with toothache, said to himself, "There mustbe some way of filling teeth to prevent them aching;" he invented goldfilling for teeth. 

The great things of the world have not been done by men of large means. Want has been the great schoolmaster of the race: necessity has been themother of all great inventions. Ericsson began the construction of ascrew-propeller in a bath-room. John Harrison, the great inventor of themarine chronometer, began his career in the loft of an old barn. Partsof the first steamboat ever run in America were set up in the vestry ofan old church in Philadelphia by Fitch. McCormick began to make hisfamous reaper in an old grist-mill. The first model dry-dock was made inan attic. Clark, the founder of Clark University of Worcester, Mass. , began his great fortune by making toy wagons in a horse-shed. 

Opportunities? They crowd around us. Forces of nature plead to be usedin the service of man, as lightning for ages tried to attract hisattention to electricity, which would do his drudgery and leave him todevelop the God-given powers within him. 

There is power lying latent everywhere, waiting for the observant eye todiscover it. 

First find out what the people need and then supply that want. Aninvention to make the smoke go the wrong way in a chimney might be avery ingenious thing, but it would be of no use to humanity. The patentoffice at Washington is full of wonderful devices, ingenious mechanism;not one in hundreds is of earthly use to the inventor or to the world, and yet how many families have been impoverished and have struggled foryears mid want and woe, while the father has been working on uselessinventions. These men did not study the wants of humanity. A. T. Stewart, as a boy, lost eighty-seven cents when his capital was onedollar and a half, in buying buttons and thread which people would notpurchase. After that he made it a rule never to buy anything whichpeople did not want. 

The first thing a youth, entering the city to make his home there, needsto do is to make himself a necessity to the person who employs him, according to the Boston _Herald_. Whatever he may have been at home, itcounts for nothing until he has done something that makes known thequality of the stuff that is in him. If he shirks work, however humbleit may be, the work will soon be inclined to shirk him. But the youthwho comes into a city to make his way in the world, and is not afraid ofdoing his best whether he is paid for it or not, is not long in findingremunerative employment. The people who seem so indifferent to employingyoung people from the country are eagerly watching for the newcomers, but they look for qualities of character and service in actual workbefore they manifest confidence or give recognition. It is the youth whois deserving that wins his way to the front, and when once he has beentested his promotion is only a question of time. It is the same withyoung women. There are seemingly no places for them where they can earna decent living, but the moment they fill their places worthily there isroom enough for them, and progress is rapid. What the city people desiremost is to find those who have ability to take important places, and thequestion of gaining a position in the city resolves itself at once intothe question of what the young persons have brought with them from home. It is the staying qualities that have been in-wrought from childhoodwhich are now in requisition, and the success of the boy or girl isdetermined by the amount of energetic character that has been developedin the early years at home. Take up the experience of every man orwoman who has made a mark in the city for the last hundred years, and ithas been the sterling qualities of the home training that haveconstituted the success of later years. 

Don't think you have no chance in life because you have no capital tobegin with. Most of the rich men of to-day began poor. The chances areyou would be ruined if you had capital. You can only use to advantagewhat has become a part of yourself by your earning it. It is estimatedthat not one rich man's son in ten thousand dies rich. God has givenevery man a capital to start with; we are born rich. He is rich who hasgood health, a sound body, good muscles; he is rich who has a good head, a good disposition, a good heart; he is rich who has two good hands, with five chances on each. Equipped? Every man is equipped as only Godcould equip him. What a fortune he possesses in the marvelous mechanismof his body and mind. It is individual effort that has accomplishedeverything worth accomplishing in this world. Money to start with isonly a crutch, which, if any misfortune knocks it from under you, wouldonly make your fall all the more certain. 

CHAPTER III. 

HOW DID HE BEGIN?

 There can be no doubt that the captains of industry to-day, using that term in its broadest sense, are men who began life as poor boys. --SETH LOW. 

 Poverty is very terrible, and sometimes kills the very soul within us, but it is the north wind that lashes men into Vikings; it is the soft, luscious south wind which lulls them to lotus dreams. --OUIDA. 

 'Tis a common proof, That lowliness is young ambition's ladder --SHAKESPEARE. 

"Fifty years ago, " said Hezekiah Conant, the millionaire manufacturerand philanthropist of Pawtucket, R. I. , "I persuaded my father to let meleave my home in Dudley, Mass. , and strike out for myself. So onemorning in May, 1845, the old farm horse and wagon was hitched up, and, dressed in our Sunday clothes, father and I started for Worcester. Ourobject was to get me the situation offered by an advertisement in theWorcester County _Gazette_ as follows:

 BOY WANTED. 

 WANTED IMMEDIATELY. --At the _Gazette_ Office, a well disposed boy, able to do heavy rolling. Worcester, May 7. 

"The financial inducements were thirty dollars the first year, thirty-five the next, and forty dollars the third year and board in theemployer's family. These conditions were accepted, and I began work thenext day. The _Gazette_ was an ordinary four-page sheet. I soon learnedwhat 'heavy rolling' meant for the paper was printed on a 'Washington'hand-press, the edition of about 2000 copies requiring two laboriousintervals of about ten hours each, every week. The printing of theoutside was generally done Friday and kept me very busy all day. Theinside went to press about three or four o'clock Tuesday afternoon, andit was after three o'clock on Wednesday morning before I could go tobed, tired and lame from the heavy rolling. In addition, I also had thelaborious task of carrying a quantity of water from the pump behind theblock around to the entrance in front, and then up two flights ofstairs, usually a daily job. I was at first everybody's servant. I wasabused, called all sorts of nicknames, had to sweep out the office, build fires in winter, run errands, post bills, carry papers, wait onthe editor, in fact I led the life of a genuine printer's devil; butwhen I showed them at length that I had learned to set type and run thepress, I got promoted, and another boy was hired to succeed to my task, with all its decorations. That was my first success, and from that dayto this I have never asked anybody to get me a job or situation, andnever used a letter of recommendation; but when an important job was inprospect the proposed employers were given all facilities to learn of myabilities and character. If some young men are easily discouraged, Ihope they may gain encouragement and strength from my story. It is along, rough road at first, but, like the ship on the ocean, you must layyour course for the place where you hope to land, and take advantage ofall favoring circumstances. "

"Don't go about the town any longer in that outlandish rig. Let me giveyou an order on the store. Dress up a little, Horace. " Horace Greeleylooked down on his clothes as if he had never before noticed how seedythey were, and replied: "You see, Mr. Sterrett, my father is on a newplace, and I want to help him all I can. " He had spent but six dollarsfor personal expenses in seven months, and was to receive one hundredand thirty-five from Judge J. M. Sterrett of the Erie _Gazette_ forsubstitute work. He retained but fifteen dollars and gave the rest tohis father, with whom he had moved from Vermont to Western Pennsylvania, and for whom he had camped out many a night to guard the sheep fromwolves. He was nearly twenty-one; and, although tall and gawky, withtow-colored hair, a pale face and whining voice, he resolved to seekhis fortune in New York City. Slinging his bundle of clothes on a stickover his shoulder, he walked sixty miles through the woods to Buffalo, rode on a canal boat to Albany, descended the Hudson in a barge, andreached New York, just as the sun was rising, August 18, 1831. 

For days Horace wandered up and down the streets, going into scores ofbuildings and asking if they wanted "a hand;" but "no" was theinvariable reply. His quaint appearance led many to think he was anescaped apprentice. One Sunday at his boarding-place he heard thatprinters were wanted at "West's Printing-office. " He was at the door atfive o'clock Monday morning, and asked the foreman for a job at seven. The latter had no idea that the country greenhorn could set type for thePolyglot Testament on which help was needed, but said: "Fix up a casefor him and we'll see if he _can_ do anything. " When the proprietor camein, he objected to the newcomer and told the foreman to let him go whenhis first day's work was done. That night Horace showed a proof of thelargest and most correct day's work that had then been done. In tenyears Horace was a partner in a small printing-office. He founded the_New Yorker_, the best weekly paper in the United States, but it was notprofitable. When Harrison was nominated for President in 1840, Greeleystarted _The Log Cabin_, which reached the then fabulous circulation ofninety thousand. But on this paper at a penny a copy, he made no money. His next venture was the New York _Tribune_, price one cent. To start ithe borrowed a thousand dollars and printed five thousand copies of thefirst number. It was difficult to give them all away. He began with sixhundred subscribers, and increased the list to eleven thousand in sixweeks. The demand for the _Tribune_ grew faster than new machinery couldbe obtained to print it. It was a paper whose editor always tried to be_right_. 

At the World's Fair in New York in 1853 President Pierce might have beenseen watching a young man exhibiting a patent rat trap. He was attractedby the enthusiasm and diligence of the young man, but never dreamed thathe would become one of the richest men in the world. It seemed likesmall business for Jay Gould to be exhibiting a rat trap, but he did itwell and with enthusiasm. In fact he was bound to do it as well as itcould be done. Young Gould supported himself by odd jobs at surveying, paying his way by erecting sundials for farmers at a dollar apiece, frequently taking his pay in board. Thus he laid the foundation for thebusiness career in which he became so rich. 

Fred. Douglass started in life with less than nothing, for he did notown his own body, and he was pledged before his birth to pay hismaster's debts. To reach the starting-point of the poorest white boy, hehad to climb as far as the distance which the latter must ascend if hewould become President of the United States. He saw his mother but twoor three times, and then in the night, when she would walk twelve milesto be with him an hour, returning in time to go into the field at dawn. He had no chance to study, for he had no teacher, and the rules of theplantation forbade slaves to learn to read and write. But somehow, unnoticed by his master, he managed to learn the alphabet from scraps ofpaper and patent medicine almanacs, and no limits could then be placedto his career. He put to shame thousands of white boys. He fled fromslavery at twenty-one, went North and worked as a stevedore in New Yorkand New Bedford. At Nantucket he was given an opportunity to speak in ananti-slavery meeting, and made so favorable an impression that he wasmade agent of the Anti-Slavery Society of Massachusetts. While travelingfrom place to place to lecture, he would study with all his might. Hewas sent to Europe to lecture, and won the friendship of severalEnglishmen, who gave him $750, with which he purchased his freedom. Heedited a paper in Rochester, N. Y. , and afterward conducted the _NewEra_ in Washington. For several years he was Marshal of the District ofColumbia. He became the first colored man in the United States, the peerof any man in the country, and died honored by all in 1895. 

"What has been done can be done again, " said the boy with no chance whobecame Lord Beaconsfield, England's great prime minister. "I am not aslave, I am not a captive, and by energy I can overcome greaterobstacles. " Jewish blood flowed in his veins, and everything seemedagainst him, but he remembered the example of Joseph, who became primeminister of Egypt four thousand years before, and that of Daniel, whowas prime minister to the greatest despot of the world five centuriesbefore the birth of Christ. He pushed his way up through the lowerclasses, up through the middle classes, up through the upper classes, until he stood a master, self-poised upon the topmost round of politicaland social power. Rebuffed, scorned, ridiculed, hissed down in the Houseof Commons, he simply said, "The time will come when you shall hear me. "The time did come, and the boy with no chance but a determined will, swayed the sceptre of England for a quarter of a century. 

"I learned grammar when I was a private soldier on the pay of sixpence aday, " said William Cobbett. "The edge of my berth, or that of theguard-bed, was my seat to study in; my knapsack was my bookcase; a bitof board lying on my lap was my writing table, and the task did notdemand anything like a year of my life. I had no money to purchasecandles or oil; in winter it was rarely that I could get any eveninglight but that of the fire, and only my turn, even of that. To buy a penor a sheet of paper I was compelled to forego some portion of my food, though in a state of half starvation. I had no moment of time that Icould call my own, and I had to read and write amidst the talking, laughing, singing, whistling, and bawling of at least half a score ofthe most thoughtless of men, and that, too, in the hours of theirfreedom from all control. Think not lightly of the _farthing_ I had togive, now and then, for pen, ink, or paper. That farthing was, alas! agreat sum to me. I was as tall as I am now, and I had great health andgreat exercise. The whole of the money not expended for us at market was_twopence a week_ for each man. I remember, and well I may! that uponone occasion I had, after all absolutely necessary expenses, on aFriday, made shift to have a half-penny in reserve, which I had destinedfor the purchase of a red herring in the morning, but when I pulled offmy clothes at night, so hungry then as to be hardly able to endure life, I found that I had lost my half-penny. I buried my head under themiserable sheet and rug, and cried like a child. 

"If I, under such circumstances, could encounter and overcome thistask, " he added, "is there, can there be in the world, a youth to findany excuse for its non-performance?"

"I have talked with great men, " Lincoln told his fellow-clerk andfriend, Greene, according to _McClure's Magazine_, "and I do not see howthey differ from others. "

He made up his mind to put himself before the public, and talked of hisplans to his friends. In order to keep in practice in speaking he walkedseven or eight miles to debating clubs. "Practicing polemics, " was whathe called the exercise. 

He seems now for the first time to have begun to study subjects. Grammarwas what he chose. He sought Mentor Graham, the schoolmaster, and askedhis advice. 

"If you are going before the public, " Mr. Graham told him, "you ought todo it. "

But where could he get a grammar? There was but one in the neighborhood, Mr. Graham said, and that was six miles away. 

Without waiting for more information the young man rose from thebreakfast-table, walked immediately to the place, borrowed this rarecopy of Kirkham's Grammar, and before night was deep in its mysteries. From that time on for weeks he gave every moment of his leisure tomastering the contents of the book. Frequently he asked his friendGreene to "hold the book" while he recited, and when puzzled by a pointhe would consult Mr. Graham. 

Lincoln's eagerness to learn was such that the whole neighborhood becameinterested. The Greenes lent him books, the schoolmaster kept him inmind and helped him as he could, and even the village cooper let himcome into his shop and keep up a fire of shavings sufficiently bright toread by at night. It was not long before the grammar was mastered. 

"Well, " Lincoln said to his fellow-clerk, Greene, "if that's what theycall science, I think I'll go at another. "

He had made another discovery--that he could conquer subjects. 

The poor and friendless lad, George Peabody, weary, footsore and hungry, called at a tavern in Concord, N. H. , and asked to be allowed to sawwood for lodging and breakfast. Half a century later he called thereagain, but then George Peabody was one of the greatest millionairebankers of the world. Bishop Fowler says: "It is one of the greatestencouragements of our age, that ordinary men with extraordinary industryreach the highest stations. "

Greeley's father, because the boy tried to yoke the off ox on the nearside, said: "Ah! that boy will never get along in the world. He'llnever know enough to come in when it rains. "

He was too poor to wear stockings. But Horace persevered, and became oneof the greatest editors of his century. 

Handel's father hated music, and would not allow a musical instrument inthe house; but the boy with an aim secured a little spinet, hid it inthe attic, where he practiced every minute he could steal withoutdetection, until he surprised the great players and composers of Europeby his wonderful knowledge of music. He was very practical in his work, and studied the taste and sensitiveness of audiences until he knewexactly what they wanted; then he would compose something to supply thedemand. He analyzed the effect of sounds and combinations of sounds uponthe senses, and wrote directly to human needs. His greatest work, "TheMessiah, " was composed in Dublin for the benefit of poor debtors whowere imprisoned there. The influence of this masterpiece was tremendous. It was said it out-preached the preacher, out-prayed prayers, reformedthe wayward, softened stony hearts, as it told the wonderful story ofredemption, in sound. 

A. T. Stewart began life as a teacher in New York at $300 a year. Hesoon resigned and began that career as a merchant in which he achieved asuccess almost without precedent. Honesty, one price, cash on delivery, and business on business principles were his invariable rules. Absoluteregularity and system reigned in every department. In fifty years hemade a fortune of from thirty to forty million dollars. He was nominatedas Secretary of the Treasury in 1869, but it was found that the lawforbids a merchant to occupy that position. He offered to resign, or togive the entire profits of his business to the poor of New York as longas he should remain in office. President Grant declined to accept suchan offer. 

Poor Kepler struggled with constant anxieties, and told fortunes byastrology for a livelihood, saying that astrology as the daughter ofastronomy ought to keep her mother; but fancy a man of science wastingprecious time over horoscopes. "I supplicate you, " he writes toMoestlin, "if there is a situation vacant at Tübingen, do what you canto obtain it for me, and let me know the prices of bread and wine andother necessaries of life, for my wife is not accustomed to live onbeans. " He had to accept all sorts of jobs; he made almanacs, and servedanyone who would pay him. 

Who could have predicted that the modest, gentle boy, Raphael, withouteither riches or noted family, would have worked his way to such renown, or that one of his pictures, but sixty-six and three-quarter inchessquare (the Mother of Jesus), would be sold to the Empress of Russia, for $66, 000? His Ansedei Madonna, was bought by the National Gallery for$350, 000. Think of Michael Angelo working for six florins a month, andeighteen years on St. Peter's for nothing!

Dr. Johnson was so afflicted with king's-evil that he lost the use ofone eye. The youth could not even engage in the pastimes of his mates, as he could not see the gutter without bending his head down near thestreet. He read and studied terribly. Finally a friend offered to sendhim to Oxford, but he failed to keep his promise, and the boy had toleave. He returned home, and soon afterward his father died insolvent. He conquered adverse fortune and bodily infirmities with the fortitudeof a true hero. 

Ichabod Washburn, a poor boy born near Plymouth Rock, was apprenticed toa blacksmith in Worcester, Mass. , and was so bashful that he scarcelydared to eat in the presence of others; but he determined that he wouldmake the best wire in the world, and would contrive ways and means tomanufacture it in enormous quantities. At that time there was no goodwire made in the United States. One house in England had the monopoly ofmaking steel wire for pianos for more than a century. Young Washburn, however, had grit, and was bound to succeed. His wire became thestandard everywhere. At one time he made 250, 000 yards of iron wiredaily, consuming twelve tons of metal, and requiring the services ofseven hundred men. He amassed an immense fortune, of which he gave awaya large part during his life, and bequeathed the balance to charitableinstitutions. 

John Jacob Astor left home at seventeen to acquire a fortune. Hiscapital consisted of two dollars, and three resolutions, --to be honest, to be industrious and not to gamble. Two years later he reached NewYork, and began work in a fur store at two dollars a week and his board. Soon learning the details of the business, he began operations on hisown account. By giving personal attention to every purchase and sale, roaming the woods to trade with the Indians, or crossing the Atlantic tosell his furs at a great profit in England, he soon became the leadingfur dealer in the United States. His idea of what constitutes a fortuneexpanded faster than his acquisitions. At fifty he owned millions; atsixty his millions owned him. He invested in land, becoming in time therichest owner of real estate in America. Generous to his family, heseldom gave much for charity. He once subscribed fifty dollars for somebenevolent purpose, when one of the committee of solicitation said, "Wedid hope for more, Mr. Astor. Your son gave us a hundred dollars. " "Ah!"chuckled the rich furrier, "William has a rich father. Mine was poor. "

Elihu Burritt wrote in a diary kept at Worcester, whither he went toenjoy its library privileges, such entries as these: "Monday, June 18, headache, 40 pages Cuvier's 'Theory of the Earth, ' 64 pages of French, 11 hours' forging. Tuesday, June 19, 60 lines Hebrew, 30 Danish, 10lines Bohemian, 9 lines Polish, 15 names of stars, 10 hours' forging. Wednesday, June 20, 25 lines Hebrew, 8 lines Syriac, 11 hours' forging. "He mastered eighteen languages and thirty-two dialects. He becameeminent as the "Learned Blacksmith, " and for his noble work in theservice of humanity. Edward Everett said of the manner in which this boywith no chance acquired great learning: "It is enough to make one whohas good opportunities for education hang his head in shame. "

"I was born in poverty, " said Vice-President Henry Wilson. "Want sat bymy cradle. I know what it is to ask a mother for bread when she has noneto give. I left my home at ten years of age, and served anapprenticeship of eleven years, receiving a month's schooling each year, and, at the end of eleven years of hard work, a yoke of oxen and sixsheep, which brought me eighty-four dollars. I never spent the sum ofone dollar for pleasure, counting every penny from the time I was borntill I was twenty-one years of age. I know what it is to travel wearymiles and ask my fellow-men to give me leave to toil. * * * In thefirst month after I was twenty-one years of age, I went into the woods, drove a team, and cut mill-logs. I rose in the morning before daylightand worked hard till after dark, and received the magnificent sum of sixdollars for the month's work! Each of these dollars looked as large tome as the moon looks to-night. "

"Many a farmer's son, " says Thurlow Weed, "has found the bestopportunities for mental improvement in his intervals of leisure whiletending 'sap-bush. ' Such, at any rate, was my own experience. At nightyou had only to feed the kettles and keep up the fires, the sap havingbeen gathered and the wood cut before dark. During the day we wouldalways lay in a good stock of 'fat-pine' by the light of which, blazingbright before the sugar-house, in the posture the serpent was condemnedto assume, as a penalty for tempting our first grandmother, I passedmany a delightful night in reading. I remember in this way to have reada history of the French Revolution, and to have obtained from it abetter and more enduring knowledge of its events and horrors and of theactors in that great national tragedy, than I have received from allsubsequent reading. I remember also how happy I was in being able toborrow the books of a Mr. Keyes after a two-mile tramp through the snow, shoeless, my feet swaddled in remnants of rag carpet. "

"That fellow will beat us all some day, " said a merchant, speaking ofJohn Wanamaker and his close attention to his work. What a prediction tomake of a young man who started business with a little clothing in ahand cart in the streets of Philadelphia. But this youth had _theindomitable spirit of a conqueror in him_, and you could not keep himdown. General Grant said to George W. Childs, "Mr. Wanamaker couldcommand an army. " His great energy, method, industry, economy, and highmoral principle, attracted President Harrison, who appointed himPostmaster-General. 

Jacques Aristide Boucicault began his business life as an employé in adry goods house in a small provincial town in France. After a few yearshe went to Paris, where he prospered so rapidly that in 1853 he became apartner and later the sole proprietor of the Bon Marché, then only asmall shop, which became under his direction the most uniqueestablishment in the world. His idea was to establish a combinedphilanthropic and commercial house on a large scale. Every one whoworked for him was advanced progressively, according to his length ofemployment and the value of the services he rendered. He furnished freetuition, free medical attendance, and a free library for employés; aprovident fund affording a small capital for males and a marriageportion for females at the expiration of ten or fifteen years ofservice; a free reading room for the public; and a free art gallery forartists to exhibit their paintings or sculptures. After his sudden deathin 1877, his only son carried forward his father's projects until he, too, died in 1879, when his widow, Marguerite Guerin, continued andextended his business and beneficent plans until her death in 1887. Sowell did this family lay the foundations of a building covering 108, 000square feet, with many accessory buildings of smaller size, and of abusiness employing 3600 persons with sales amounting to nearly$20, 000, 000 annually, that every department is still conducted with allits former success in accordance with the instructions of the founders. They are here no longer in their bodily presence, but their spirit, their ideas, still pervade the vast establishment. Everything is stillsold at a small profit and at a price plainly marked, and any articlewhich may have ceased to please the purchaser can, without the slightestdifficulty, be exchanged or its value refunded. 

When James Gordon Bennett was forty years old, he collected all hisproperty, three hundred dollars, and in a cellar with a board upon twobarrels for a desk, himself his own type setter, office boy, publisher, newsboy, clerk, editor, proof-reader and printer's devil, he started theNew York _Herald_. In all his literary work up to this time he hadtried to imitate Franklin's style; and, as is the fate of all imitators, he utterly failed. 

He lost twenty years of his life trying to be somebody else. He firstshowed the material he was made of in the "Salutatory, " of the _Herald_, viz. , "Our only guide shall be good, sound and practical common-senseapplicable to the business and bosoms of men engaged in everyday life. We shall support no party, be the organ of no faction or coterie, andcare nothing for any election or any candidate from President down toconstable. We shall endeavor to record facts upon every public andproper subject stripped of verbiage and coloring, with comments whensuitable, just, independent, fearless and good-tempered. "

Joseph Hunter was a carpenter, Robert Burns a ploughman, Keats adruggist, Thomas Carlyle a mason, Hugh Miller a stone mason. Rubens, theartist, was a page, Swedenborg, a mining engineer. Dante and Descarteswere soldiers. Ben Johnson was a brick layer and worked at buildingLincoln Inn in London with trowel in hand and a book in his pocket. Jeremy Taylor was a barber. Andrew Johnson was a tailor. Cardinal Wolseywas a butcher's son. So were Defoe and Kirke White. Michael Faraday wasthe son of a blacksmith. He even excelled his teacher, Sir Humphry Davy, who was an apprentice to an apothecary. 

Virgil was the son of a porter, Homer of a farmer, Pope of a merchant, Horace of a shopkeeper, Demosthenes of a cutler, Milton of a moneyscrivener, Shakespeare of a wool stapler, and Oliver Cromwell of abrewer. 

John Wanamaker's first salary was $1. 25 per week. A. T. Stewart beganhis business life as a school teacher. James Keene drove a milk wagon ina California town. Joseph Pulitzer, proprietor of the New York _World_, once acted as stoker on a Mississippi steamboat. When a young man, CyrusField was a clerk in a New England store. George W. Childs was an errandboy for a bookseller at $4 a month. Andrew Carnegie began work in aPittsburg telegraph office at $3 a week. C. P. Huntington sold butterand eggs for what he could get a pound or dozen. Whitelaw Reid was oncea correspondent of a newspaper in Cincinnati at $5 per week. AdamForepaugh was once a butcher in Philadelphia. 

Sarah Bernhardt was a dressmaker's apprentice. Adelaide Neilson beganlife as a child's nurse. Miss Braddon, the novelist, was a utilityactress in the provinces. Charlotte Cushman was the daughter of poorpeople. 

Mr. W. O. Stoddard, in his "Men of Business, " tells a characteristicstory of the late Leland Stanford. When eighteen years of age his fatherpurchased a tract of woodland, but had not the means to clear it as hewished. He told Leland that he could have all he could make from thetimber if he would leave the land clear of trees. A new market had justthen been created for cord wood, and Leland took some money that he hadsaved, hired other choppers to help him, and sold over two thousandcords of wood to the Mohawk and Hudson River Railroad at a net profit of$2600. He used this sum to start him in his law studies, and thus, asMr. Stoddard says, chopped his way to the bar. 

It is said that the career of Benjamin Franklin is full of inspirationfor any young man. When he left school for good he was only twelve yearsof age. At first he did little but read. He soon found, however, thatreading, alone, would not make him an educated man, and he proceeded toact upon this discovery at once. At school he had been unable tounderstand arithmetic. Twice he had given it up as a hopeless puzzle, and finally left school almost hopelessly ignorant upon the subject. Butthe printer's boy soon found his ignorance of figures extremelyinconvenient. When he was about fourteen he took up for the _third time_the "_Cocker's Arithmetic_, " _which had baffled him at school_, and_ciphered all through it with ease and pleasure_. He then mastered awork upon navigation, which included the rudiments of geometry, and thustasted "the inexhaustible charm of mathematics. " He pursued a similarcourse, we are told, in acquiring the art of composition, in which, atlength, he excelled most of the men of his time. When he was but a boyof sixteen, he wrote so well that the pieces which he slyly sent to hisbrother's paper were thought to have been written by some of the mostlearned men in the colony. 

Henry Clay, the "mill-boy of the slashes, " was one of seven children ofa widow too poor to send him to any but a common country school, wherehe was drilled only in the "three R's. " But he used every spare momentto study without a teacher, and in after years he was a king amongself-made men. 

The most successful man is he who has triumphed over obstacles, disadvantages and discouragements. 

It is Goodyear in his rude laboratory enduring poverty and failure untilthe pasty rubber is at length hardened; it is Edison biding his time inbaggage car and in printing office until that mysterious light and powerglows and throbs at his command; it is Carey on his cobbler's benchnourishing the great purpose that at length carried the message of loveto benighted India;--these are the cases and examples of true success. 

CHAPTER IV. 

OUT OF PLACE. 

 The high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man, is to be born with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment and happiness. --EMERSON. 

 The art of putting the right man in the right place is perhaps the first in the science of government, but the art of finding a satisfactory position for the discontented is the most difficult. --TALLEYRAND. 

 It is a celebrated thought of Socrates, that if all the misfortunes of mankind were cast into a public stock, in order to be equally distributed among the whole species, those who now think themselves the most unhappy would prefer the share they are already possessed of, before that which would fall to them by such a division. --ADDISON. 

 I was born to other things. --TENNYSON. 

 How many a rustic Milton has passed by, Stifling the speechless longings of his heart, In unremitting drudgery and care! How many a vulgar Cato has compelled His energies, no longer tameless then, To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail. --SHELLEY. 

"But I'm good for something, " pleaded a young man whom a merchant wasabout to discharge for his bluntness. "You are good for nothing as asalesman, " said his employer. "I am sure I can be useful, " said theyouth. "How? Tell me how. " "I don't know, sir, I don't know. " "Nor doI, " said the merchant, laughing at the earnestness of his clerk. "Onlydon't put me away, sir, don't put me away. Try me at something besidesselling. I cannot sell; I know I cannot sell. " "I know that, too, " saidthe principal; "that is what is wrong. " "But I can make myself usefulsomehow, " persisted the young man; "I know I can. " He was placed in thecounting-house, where his aptitude for figures soon showed itself, andin a few years he became not only chief cashier in the large store, butan eminent accountant. 

"Out of an art, " says Bulwer, "a man may be so trivial you would mistakehim for an imbecile--at best, a grown infant. Put him into his art, andhow high he soars above you! How quietly he enters into a heaven ofwhich he has become a denizen, and unlocking the gates with his goldenkey, admits you to follow, an humble reverent visitor. "

A man out of place is like a fish out of water. Its fins mean nothing, they are only a hindrance. The fish can do nothing but flounder out ofits element. But as soon as the fins feel the water, they meansomething. Fifty-two per cent of our college graduates studied law, notbecause, in many cases, they have the slightest natural aptitude for it, but because it is put down as the proper road to promotion. 

A man never grows in personal power and moral stamina when out of hisplace. If he grows at all, it is a narrow, one-sided, stunted growth, not a manly growth. Nature abhors the slightest perversion of naturalaptitude or deviation from the sealed orders which accompany every soulinto this world. 

A man out of place is not half a man. He feels unmanned, unsexed. Hecannot respect himself, hence he cannot be respected. 

You can enter all kinds of horses for a race, but only those which havenatural adaptation for speed will make records; the others will onlymake themselves ridiculous by their lumbering, unnatural exertions towin. How many truck and family-horse lawyers make themselves ridiculousby trying to speed on the law track, where courts and juries only laughat them. The effort to redeem themselves from scorn may enable them byunnatural exertions to become fairly passable, but the same effortsalong the line of their strength or adaptation would make them kings intheir line. 

"Jonathan, " said Mr. Chace, when his son told of having nearly fittedhimself for college, "thou shalt go down to the machine-shop on Mondaymorning. " It was many years before Jonathan escaped from the shop towork his way up to the position of a man of great influence as a UnitedStates Senator from Rhode Island. 

Galileo was sent to the university at Pisa at seventeen, with thestrict injunction not to neglect medical subjects for the alluring studyof philosophy or literature. But when he was eighteen he discovered thegreat principle of the pendulum by a lamp left swinging in thecathedral. 

John Adams' father was a shoemaker; and, trying to teach his son theart, gave him some "uppers" to cut out by a pattern which had athree-cornered hole in it to hang it up by. The future statesmanfollowed the pattern, hole and all. 

There is a tradition that Tennyson's first poems were published at theinstigation of his father's coachman. His grandfather gave the lad tenshillings for writing an elegy on his grandmother. As he handed it tohim, he said; "There, that's the first money you ever earned by yourpoetry, and take my word for it, it will be the last. "

Murillo's mother had marked her boy for a priest, but nature had alreadylaid her hand upon him and marked him for her own. His mother wasshocked on returning from church one day to find that the child hadtaken down the sacred family picture, "Jesus and the Lamb, " and hadpainted his own hat on the Saviour's head, and had changed the lamb intoa dog. 

The poor boy's home was broken up, and he started out on foot and aloneto seek his fortune. All he had was courage and determination to makesomething of himself. He not only became a famous artist, but a man ofgreat character. 

"Let us people who are so uncommonly clever and learned, " saysThackeray, "have a great tenderness and pity for the folks who are notendowed with the prodigious talents which we have. I have always had aregard for dunces, --those of my own school days were among thepleasantest of the fellows, and have turned out by no means the dullestin life; whereas, many a youth who could turn off Latin hexameters bythe yard, and construe Greek quite glibly, is no better than a feebleprig now, with not a pennyworth more brains than were in his head beforehis beard grew. "

"In the winter of 1824, there set in a great flood upon the town ofSidmouth, the tide rose to a terrible height. In the midst of thissublime and terrible storm, Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house, with mop and pattens, trundling hermop, squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away theAtlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused. Mrs. Partington's spirit wasup: but I need not tell you the contest was unequal; the Atlantic Oceanbeat Mrs. Partington. She was excellent at a slop or a puddle, but sheshould not have meddled with a tempest. "

How many Dame Partingtons there are of both sexes, and in every walk oflife!

The young swan is restless and uneasy until she finds the element shehas never before seen. Then, "With archéd neck Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows Her state with oary feet. "

What a wretched failure was that of Haydon the painter. He thought hefailed through the world's ingratitude or injustice, but his failure wasdue wholly to his being out of place. His bitter disappointments at hishalf successes were really pitiable because to him they were more thanfailures. He had not the slightest sense of color, yet went through lifeunder the delusion that he was an artist. 

"If it is God's will to take any of my children by death, I hope it maybe Isaac, " said the father of Dr. Isaac Barrow. "Why do you tell thatblockhead the same thing twenty times over?" asked John Wesley's father. "Because, " replied his mother, "if I had told him but nineteen times, all my labor would have been lost, while now he will understand andremember. "

A man out of place may manage to get a living, but he has lost thebuoyancy, energy and enthusiasm which are as natural to a man in hisplace as his breath. He is industrious, but he works mechanically andwithout heart. It is to support himself and family, _not because hecannot help it_. Dinner time does not come two hours before he realizesit; a man out of place is constantly looking at his watch and thinkingof his salary. 

If a man is in his place he is happy, joyous, cheerful, energetic, fertile in resources. The days are all too short for him. All hisfaculties give their consent to his work; say "yes" to his occupation. He is a man; he respects himself and is happy because all his powers areat play in their natural sphere. There is no compromising of hisfaculties, no cramping of legal acumen upon the farm; no suppressing offorensic oratorical powers at the shoemaker's bench; no stifling ofexuberance of physical strength, of visions of golden crops and bloodedcattle amid the loved country life in the dry clergyman's study, composing sermons to put the congregation to sleep. 

To be out of place is demoralizing to all the powers of manhood. Wecan't cheat nature out of her aim; if she has set all the currents ofyour life toward medicine or law, you will only be a botch at anythingelse. Will-power and application cannot make a farmer of a born painterany more than a lumbering draught horse can be changed into a racehorse. When the powers are not used along the line of their strengththey become demoralized, weakened, deteriorated. Self-respect, enthusiasm and courage ooze out; we become half-hearted and success isimpossible. 

Scott was called the great blockhead while in Edinburgh College. Grant'smother called the future General and President, "Useless Grant, " becausehe was so unhandy and dull. 

Erskine had at length found his place as a lawyer; he carried everythingbefore him at the bar. Had he remained in the navy he would probablynever have been heard from. When elected to Parliament, his lofty spiritwas chilled by the cold sarcasm and contemptuous indifference of Pitt, whom he was expected by his friends to annihilate. But he was again outof his place; he was shorn of his magic power and his eloquent tonguefaltered from a consciousness of being out of his place. 

Gould failed as a storekeeper, tanner and surveyor and civil engineer, before he got into a railroad office where he "struck his gait. "

When extracts from James Russell Lowell's poem at Harvard were shown hisfather at Rome, instead of being pleased the latter said, "Jamespromised me when I left home, that he would give up poetry and stick tobooks. I had hoped that he had become less flighty. " The world is fullof people at war with their positions. 

Man only grows when he is developing along the lines of his ownindividuality, and not when he is trying to be somebody else. Allattempts to imitate another man, when there is no one like you in allcreation, as the pattern was broken when you were born, is not only toruin your own pattern, but to make only an echo of the one imitated. There is no strength off the lines of our own individuality. 

Anywhere else we are dwarfs, weaklings, echoes, and the echo even of agreat man is a sorry contrast to even the smallest human being who ishimself. 

CHAPTER V. 

WHAT SHALL I DO?

 No man ever made an ill-figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them. --SWIFT. 

 Blessed is he who has found his work, --let him ask no other blessing. --CARLYLE. 

 Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing. --SYDNEY SMITH. 

 He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause. --BEECHER. 

 I am glad to think I am not bound to make the world go round; But only to discover and to do, With cheerful heart, the work that God appoints. --JEAN INGELOW. 

"Do that which is assigned you, " says Emerson, "and you cannot hope toomuch or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterancebrave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel ofthe Egyptians, or the pen of Moses or Dante, but different from allthese. "

"I felt that I was in the world to do something, and thought I must, "said Whittier, thus giving the secret of his great power. It is the manwho must enter law, literature, medicine, the ministry, or any other ofthe overstocked professions, who will succeed. His certain call--thatis, his love for it, and his fidelity to it--are the imperious factorsof his career. If a man enters a profession simply because hisgrandfather made a great name in it, or his mother wants him to, with nolove or adaptability for it, it were far better for him to be a daylaborer. In the humbler work, his intelligence may make him a leader; inthe other career he might do as much harm as a boulder rolled from itsplace upon a railroad track, a menace to the next express. 

Lowell said: "It is the vain endeavor to make ourselves what we are not, that has strewn history with so many broken purposes, and lives left inthe rough. "

"The age has no aversion to preaching as such, " said Phillips Brooks, "it may not listen to your preaching. " But though it may not listen toyour preaching, it will wear your boots, or buy your flour, or see starsthrough your telescope. It has a use for every person, and it is hisbusiness to find out what that use is. 

The following advertisement appeared several times in a paper withoutbringing a letter:

 "WANTED. --Situation by a Practical Printer, who is competent to take charge of any department in a printing and publishing house. Would accept a professorship in any of the academies. Has no objection to teach ornamental painting and penmanship, geometry, trigonometry, and many other sciences. Has had some experience as a lay preacher. Would have no objection to form a small class of young ladies and gentlemen to instruct them in the higher branches. To a dentist or chiropodist he would be invaluable; or he would cheerfully accept a position as bass or tenor singer in a choir. "

At length there appeared this addition to the notice:

 "P. S. Will accept an offer to saw and split wood at less than the usual rates. "

This secured a situation at once, and the advertisement was seen nomore. 

Don't wait for a higher position or a larger salary. Enlarge theposition you already occupy; put originality of method into it. Fill itas it never was filled before. Be more prompt, more energetic, morethorough, more polite than your predecessor or fellow-workmen. Studyyour business, devise new modes of operation, be able to give youremployer points. The art lies not in giving satisfaction merely, not insimply filling your place, but in doing better than was expected, insurprising your employer; and the reward will be a better place and alarger salary. 

"He that hath a trade, " says Franklin, "hath an estate; and he that hatha calling hath a place of profit and honor. A ploughman on his legs ishigher than a gentleman on his knees. "

_Follow your bent. _ You cannot long fight successfully against youraspirations. Parents, friends, or misfortune may stifle and suppress thelongings of the heart, by compelling you to perform unwelcome tasks;but, like a volcano, the inner fire will burst the crusts which confineit and pour forth its pent-up genius in eloquence, in song, in art, orin some favorite industry. Beware of "a talent which you cannot hope topractice in perfection. " Nature hates all botched and half-finishedwork, and will pronounce her curse upon it. 

Your talent is your _call_. Your legitimate destiny speaks in yourcharacter. 

If you have found your place, your occupation has the consent of everyfaculty of your being. 

If possible, choose that occupation which focuses the largest amount ofyour experience and tastes. You will then not only have a congenialvocation, but will utilize largely your skill and business knowledge, which is your true capital. 

There is no doubt that every person has a special adaptation for his ownpeculiar part in life. A very few--the geniuses, we call them--have thismarked in an unusual degree, and very early in life. 

A man's business does more to make him than anything else. It hardenshis muscles, strengthens his body, quickens his blood, sharpens hismind, corrects his judgment, wakes up his inventive genius, puts hiswits to work, starts him on the race of life, arouses his ambition, makes him feel that he is a man and must fill a man's shoes, do a man'swork, bear a man's part in life, and show himself a man in that part. Noman feels himself a man who is not doing a man's business. A man withoutemployment is not a man. He does not prove by his works that he is aman. A hundred and fifty pounds of bone and muscle do not make a man. Agood cranium full of brains is not a man. The bone and muscle and brainmust know how to do a man's work, think a man's thoughts, mark out aman's path, and bear a man's weight of character and duty before theyconstitute a man. 

Whatever you do in life, be greater than your calling. Most people lookupon an occupation or calling as a mere expedient for earning a living. What a mean, narrow view to take of what was intended for the greatschool of life, the great man-developer, the character-builder; thatwhich should broaden, deepen, heighten, and round out into symmetry, harmony and beauty, all the God-given faculties within us! How we shrinkfrom the task and evade the lessons which were intended for theunfolding of life's great possibilities into usefulness and power, asthe sun unfolds into beauty and fragrance the petals of the flower. 

"Girls, you cheapen yourselves by lack of purpose in life, " says RenaL. Miner. "You show commendable zeal in pursuing your studies; youralertness in comprehending and ability in surmounting difficult problemshave become proverbial; nine times out of ten you outrank your brothersthus far; but when the end is attained, the goal reached, whether it bethe graduating certificate from a graded school, or a college diploma, for nine out of every ten it might as well be added thereto, 'dead tofurther activity, ' or, 'sleeping until marriage shall resurrect her. '

"Crocheting, placquing, dressing, visiting, music, and flirtations, makeup the sum total for the expense and labor expended for your existence. If forced to earn your support, you are content to stand behind acounter, or teach school term after term in the same grade, while theyoung men who graduated with you walk up the grades, as up a ladder, toprofessorship and good salary, from which they swing off into law, physics, or perhaps the legislative firmament, leaving difficulties andobstacles like nebulæ in their wake. --You girls, satisfied withmediocrity, have an eye mainly for the 'main chance'--marriage. If youmarry wealthy, --which is marrying well according to the modern popularidea, --you dress more elegantly, cultivate more fashionable society, leave your thinking for your husband and your minister to do for you, and become in the economy of life but a sentient nonentity. If you aretrue to the grand passion, and accept with it poverty, you bake, brew, scrub, spank the children, and talk with your neighbor over the backfence for recreation, spending the years literally like the horse in atreadmill, all for the lack of a purpose, --a purpose sufficiently potentto convert the latent talent into a gem of living beauty, a creativeforce which makes all adjuncts secondary, like planets to their centralsun. Choose some one course or calling, and master it in all itsdetails, sleep by it, swear by it, work for it, and, if marriage crownsyou, it can but add new glory to your labor. "

Dr. Hall says that the world has urgent need of "girls who are mother'sright hand; girls who can cuddle the little ones next best to mamma, andsmooth out the tangles in the domestic skein when things get twisted;girls whom father takes comfort in for something better than beauty, andthe big brothers are proud of for something that outranks the ability todance or shine in society. Next, we want girls of sense, --girls who havea standard of their own regardless of conventionalities, and areindependent enough to live up to it; girls who simply won't wear atrailing dress on the street to gather up microbes and all sorts ofdefilement; girls who don't wear a high hat to the theatre, or laceratetheir feet with high heels and endanger their health with corsets;girls who will wear what is pretty and becoming and snap their fingersat the dictates of fashion when fashion is horrid and silly. And we wantgood girls, --girls who are sweet, right straight out from the heart tothe lips; innocent and pure and simple girls, with less knowledge of sinand duplicity and evil-doing at twenty than the pert little schoolgirlof ten has all too often. And we want careful girls and prudent girls, who think enough of the generous father who toils to maintain them incomfort, and of the gentle mother who denies herself much that they mayhave so many pretty things, to count the cost and draw the line betweenthe essentials and non-essentials; girls who strive to save and not tospend; girls who are unselfish and eager to be a joy and a comfort inthe home rather than an expense and a useless burden. We want girls withhearts, --girls who are full of tenderness and sympathy, with tears thatflow for other people's ills, and smiles that light outward their ownbeautiful thoughts. We have lots of clever girls, and brilliant girls, and witty girls. Give us a consignment of jolly girls, warm-hearted andimpulsive girls; kind and entertaining to their own folks, and withlittle desire to shine in the garish world. With a few such girlsscattered around, life would freshen up for all of us, as the weatherdoes under the spell of summer showers. "

CHAPTER VI. 

WILL YOU PAY THE PRICE?

 The gods sell anything and to everybody at a fair price. --EMERSON. 

 All desire knowledge, but no one is willing to pay the price. --JUVENAL. 

 There is no royal path which leads to geometry. --EUCLID. 

 There is no road to success but through a clear, strong purpose. A purpose underlies character, culture, position, attainment of whatever sort. --T. T. MUNGER. 

 Remember you have not a sinew whose law of strength is not action; you have not a faculty of body, mind, or soul, whose law of improvement is not energy. --E. B. HALL. 

 "We have but what we make, and every good Is locked by nature in a granite hand, Sheer labor must unclench. "

"Oh, if I could thus put a dream on canvas!" exclaimed an enthusiasticyoung artist, pointing to a most beautiful painting. "Dream on canvas!"growled the master, "it is the ten thousand touches with the brush youmust learn to put on canvas that make your dream. "

"There is but one method of attaining excellence, " said Sydney Smith, "and that is hard labor. "

"If only Milton's imagination could have conceived his visions, " saysWaters, "his consummate industry alone could have carved the immortallines which enshrine them. If only Newton's mind could reach out to thesecrets of nature, even his genius could only do it by the homeliesttoil. The works of Bacon are not midsummer-night's dreams, but, likecoral islands, they have risen from the depths of truth, and formedtheir broad surfaces above the ocean by the minutest accretions ofpersevering labor. The conceptions of Michael Angelo would have perishedlike a night's phantasy, had not his industry given them permanence. "

Salvini contributes the following to the _Century_ as to his habits ofstudy before he had established himself as a past master of tragedy: "Iimposed upon myself a new method of study. While I was busying myselfwith the part of Saul, I read and reread the Bible, so as to becomeimpregnated with the appropriate sentiments, manners and local color. When I took up Othello, I pored over the history of the VenetianRepublic and that of the Moorish invasion of Spain. I studied thepassions of the Moors, their art of war, their religious beliefs, nordid I overlook the romance of Giraldi Cinthio, in order the better tomaster that sublime character. I did not concern myself about asuperficial study of the words, or of some point of scenic effect, or ofgreater or less accentuation of certain phrases with a view to winpassing applause; a vaster horizon opened out before me--an infinite seaon which my bark could navigate in security, without fear of falling inwith reefs. "

His method was not new, but he considered it so, and gives his opinionin quotation-marks. He speaks of characters with which, his name is notalways associated by writers on the stage, but is correct, I think, inthe main. 

Many years ago a little boy entered Harrow school and was put in a classbeyond his years, wherein all the other boys had the advantage ofprevious instruction. His master used to reprove his dullness, but allhis efforts could not raise him from the lowest place in the class. Theboy finally procured the elementary books which the other boys hadstudied. He devoted the hours of play and many of the hours of sleep tomastering the elementary principles of these books. This boy was soon atthe head of his class and the pride of Harrow. The statue of that boy, Sir William Jones, stands to-day in St. Paul's Cathedral; for he livedto be the greatest Oriental scholar of Europe. 

"What is the secret of success in business?" asked a friend of CorneliusVanderbilt. "Secret! there is no secret about it, " replied thecommodore; "all you have to do is to attend to your business and goahead. " If you would adopt Vanderbilt's method, know your business, attend to it, and keep down expenses until your fortune is safe frombusiness perils. 

"Work or starve, " is nature's motto, --and it is written on the stars andthe sod alike, --starve mentally, starve morally, starve physically. Itis an inexorable law of nature that whatever is not used, dies. "Nothingfor nothing, " is her maxim. If we are idle and shiftless by choice, weshall be nerveless and powerless by necessity. 

The mottoes of great men often give us glimpses of the secret of theircharacters and success. "Work! work! work!" was the motto of Sir JoshuaReynolds, David Wilkie, and scores of other men who have left their markupon the world. Voltaire's motto was "Toujours au travail" (always atwork). Scott's maxim was "Never be doing nothing. " Michael Angelo was awonderful worker. He even slept in his clothes ready to spring to hiswork as soon as he awoke. He kept a block of marble in his bedroom thathe might get up in the night and work when he could not sleep. Hisfavorite device was an old man in a go-cart, with an hour-glass upon it, bearing this inscription: "Ancora imparo" (still I'm learning). Evenafter he was blind he would ask to be wheeled into the Belvidere, toexamine the statues with his hands. Cobden used to say, "I'm workinglike a horse without a moment to spare. " It was said that Handel, themusician, did the work of a dozen men. Nothing ever daunted him. Hefeared neither ridicule nor defeat. Lord Palmerston worked like a slave, even in his old age. Being asked when he considered a man in his prime, he replied, "Seventy-nine, " that being his own age. Humboldt was one ofthe world's great workers. In summer he arose at four in the morning forthirty years. He used to say work was as much of a necessity as eatingor sleeping. Sir Walter Scott was a phenomenal worker. He wrote the"Waverley Novels" at the rate of twelve volumes a year. He averaged avolume every two months during his whole working life. What an exampleis this to the young men of to-day, of the possibilities of an earnestlife! Edmund Burke was one of the most prodigious workers that everlived. 

George Stephenson used to work at meal time, getting out loads of coalwhile the miners were at dinner in order that he might earn a few extrashillings to buy a spelling-book and an arithmetic. His associatesthought he was very foolish, and asked him what good it would do tolearn to read and cipher. He told them he was determined to improve hismind; so he studied whenever he could snatch a minute before theengine's fire, and in every possible situation until he had a good, practical, common-sense education. 

Garibaldi's father decided that Guiseppe should be a minister, becausethe boy was so sorry for a cricket which lost its leg. Samuel Morse'sfather concluded that his son would preach well because he could notkeep his head above water in a dangerous attempt to catch bait in theMystic River. President Dwight told young Morse he would never make apainter, and hinted that he never would amount to much any way if he didnot study more. Although under the teaching of West and Allston inLondon, he became a tolerable portrait painter, he did not find hissphere until returning from England on a sailing vessel, he heardProfessor Jackson explain an electrical experiment in Paris, when thethought of the telegraph flashed into his mind and he found no rest, until he flashed over the wire the first message, "What hath Godwrought!" on the experimental line between Baltimore and Washington:this was May 24, 1844. 

William H. Vanderbilt was by far the wealthiest man in the world. Chauncey M. Depew estimated his fortune at two hundred millions. He lefthis eight children ten millions each, except Cornelius and William K. , who had sixty-five millions each. Commodore Vanderbilt, his father, amassed a fortune of eighty millions of dollars in his own lifetime, andthat too at a time when it was more difficult to make money than it isnow. 

Mr. C. P. Huntington is a good example of a self-made man. His fatherwas a Connecticut farmer. The farm was left to him, but he traded it offfor a lot of clocks which he peddled in mining districts for gold dustand nuggets. He and Mark Hopkins formed a partnership and opened ahardware store in California. They united with Leland Stanford in theconstruction of a railroad, and they all got rich rapidly. Mr. Huntington is one of the greatest railroad operators of the country. Healways acted upon the principle that he would control the stock of anyroad in which he was interested. He is one of the most methodical men ofall the millionaires of this country. He is very plain in his manner, strictly temperate, and very abstemious in his living. He said he neverknew what it was to be tired. 

Russell Sage used to keep a grocery store in Troy, N. Y. He finallyassociated himself with Jay Gould, who used to be a constant borrower ofmoney of him. Mr. Sage probably keeps more ready money on hand than anyother millionaire. He can nearly always control ten millions or more atcall. He has never speculated in stocks to any extent. Mr. Sage's wordis as good as any bond. He has no taste for ordinary diversions, exceptdriving. 

Philip D. Armour, who has the appearance of a prosperous farmer, wasborn on a farm near Watertown, N. J. He became fired with a desire tosee the "Boundless West. " His mind seemed to run to hogs, and with afinancial instinct he made up his mind that there was a fortune intransporting the hogs from where they were so plenty to where there wereso few of them and so many to eat them. He could now purchase every hogin the world and then have money left to buy a railroad or two. 

Mrs. Hetty Green is probably the richest woman in the world. Her fortunehas grown from the little industry of her father in New Bedford, Mass. She has raised the nine millions left her by her father and ninemillions left her by her aunt to thirty millions. She is a woman ofgreat ability and courage. She once took with her five millions ofdollars of securities in a satchel on a street car to deposit with herbanker on Wall street. 

The probabilities are that billionaires will be as plentiful in thetwentieth century as millionaires are to-day, through hard work, self-denial, rigid economy, method, accuracy, and strict temperance, fornot one of the self-made millionaires are intemperate. John D. Rockefeller never tastes intoxicating liquor. He seems as unvarying inhis method and system as the laws of the universe. Jay Gould did not usewine or intoxicating liquor of any kind. Mr. Huntington does not evendrink coffee, while William Waldorf Astor merely takes a sip of winefor courtesy's sake. Not one of the leading millionaires uses tobacco, and not one of them is profane. Very rich men are almost always honestin their dealings, so far as their word is concerned. William WaldorfAstor, until recently, has been considered the richest man in the world, but John D. Rockefeller surpasses him now, it is said. The whole wealthof Croesus was little more than the income of this modern Croesusfor one year. Mr. Rockefeller controls about eighty or ninety millionsof capital stock in the Standard Oil Trust. The Standard Oil Company isone of the best managed corporations in the world. 

Two centuries and a quarter ago, a little, tempest-tossed, weather-beaten bark, barely escaped from the jaws of the wild Atlantic, landed upon the bleakest shore of New England. From her deck disembarkeda hundred and one careworn exiles. 

To the casual observer no event could seem more insignificant. Thecontemptuous eye of the world scarcely deigned to notice it. Yet thefamous vessel that bore Cæsar and his fortunes, carried but an ignoblefreight compared with that of the Mayflower. Though landed by atreacherous pilot upon a barren and inhospitable coast, they soughtneither richer fields nor a more congenial climate, but liberty andopportunity. 

A lady once asked Turner the secret of his great success. 

"I have no secret, madam, but hard work. "

"This is a secret that many never learn, and they don't succeed becausethey fail to learn it. Labor is the genius that changes the world fromugliness to beauty, and the great curse to a great blessing. "

See Balzac, in his lonely garret, toiling, toiling, waiting, waiting, amid poverty and hunger, but neither hunger, debt, poverty nordiscouragement could induce him to swerve a hair's breadth from hispurpose. He could wait, even while a world scoffed. 

"Mankind is more indebted to industry than to ingenuity, " says Addison;"the gods set up their favors at a price and industry is the purchaser. "

Rome was a mighty nation while industry led her people, but when hergreat conquests of wealth and slaves placed her citizens above work, that moment her glory began to fade, and vice and corruption, induced byidleness, doomed the proud city to an ignominious history. Even Cicero, Rome's great orator, said, "All artisans are engaged in a disgracefuloccupation;" and Aristotle said, "The best regulated states will notpermit a mechanic to be a citizen, for it is impossible for one wholives the life of a mechanic, or hired servant, to practice a life ofvirtue. Some were born to be slaves. " But, fortunately there came amightier than Rome, Cicero or Aristotle, whose magnificent life andexample forever lifted the false ban from labor and redeemed it fromdisgrace. He gave dignity to the most menial service, and significanceto labor. 

Christ did not say, "Come unto me all ye pleasure hunters, ye indolentand ye lazy;" but "Come all ye that _labor_ and are _heavy laden_. "

Columbus was a persistent and practical, as well as an intellectualhero. He went from one state to another, urging kings and emperors toundertake the first visiting of a world which his instructed spiritalready discerned in the far-off seas. He first tried his own countrymenat Genoa, but found none ready to help him. He then went to Portugal, and submitted his project to John II. , who laid it before his council. It was scouted as extravagant and chimerical. Nevertheless, the kingendeavored to steal Columbus's idea. A fleet was sent forth in thedirection indicated by the navigator, but, being frustrated by stormsand winds, it returned to Lisbon after four days' voyaging. 

Columbus returned to Genoa, and again renewed his propositions to theRepublic, but without success. Nothing discouraged him. The finding ofthe New World was the irrevocable object of his life. He went to Spain, and landed at the town of Palos, in Andalusia. He went by chance to aconvent of Franciscans, knocked at the door and asked for a little breadand water. The prior gratefully received the stranger, entertained him, and learned from him the story of his life. He encouraged him in hishopes, and furnished him with an admission to the Court of Spain, thenat Cordova. King Ferdinand received him graciously, but before coming toa decision he desired to lay the project before a council of his wisestmen at Salamanca. Columbus had to reply, not only to the scientificarguments laid before him, but to citations from the Bible. The Spanishclergy declared that the theory of the antipodes was hostile to thefaith. The earth, they said, was an immense flat disk; and if there wasa new earth beyond the ocean, then all men could not be descended fromAdam. _Columbus was considered a fool. _

Still bent on his idea, he wrote to the King of England, then to theKing of France, without effect. At last, in 1492, Columbus wasintroduced by Louis de Saint Angel to Queen Isabella of Spain. Thefriends who accompanied him pleaded his cause with so much force andconviction that he at length persuaded the queen to aid him. 

Lord Ellenborough was a great worker. He had a very hard time in gettinga start at the bar, but was determined never to relax his industry untilsuccess came to him. When he was worked down to absolute exhaustion, hehad this card which he kept constantly before his eyes, lest he might betempted to relax his efforts: "Read or Starve. "

Show me a man who has made fifty thousand dollars, and I will show youin that man an equivalent of energy, attention to detail, trustworthiness, punctuality, professional knowledge, good address, common sense, and other marketable qualities. The farmer respects hissavings bank book not unnaturally, for it declares with all thesolemnity of a sealed and stamped document that for a certain length oftime he rose at six o'clock each morning to oversee his labors, that hepatiently waited upon seasonable weather, that he understood buying andselling. To the medical man, his fee serves as a medal to indicate thathe was brave enough to face small pox and other infectious diseases, andhis self-respect is fostered thereby. 

The barrister's brief is marked with the price of his legal knowledge, of his eloquence, or of his brave endurance during a period ofhope-deferred brieflessness. 

A rich man asked Howard Burnett to do a little thing for his album. Burnett complied and charged a thousand francs. "But it took you onlyfive minutes, " objected the rich man. "Yes, but it took me thirty yearsto learn how to do it in five minutes. "

"I prepared that sermon, " said a young sprig of divinity, "in half anhour, and preached it at once, and thought nothing of it. " "In that, "said an older minister, "your hearers are at one with you, for they alsothought nothing of it. "

Virgil seems to have accomplished about four lines a week; but then theyhave lasted eighteen hundred years and will last eighteen hundred more. 

Seven years Virgil is said to have expended in the composition of theGeorgics, and they could all be printed in about seven columns of anordinary newspaper. Tradition reports that he was in the habit ofcomposing a few lines in the morning and spending the rest of the day inpolishing them. Campbell used to say that if a poet made one good line aweek, he did very well indeed; but Moore thought that if a poet did hisduty, he could get a line done every day. 

What an army of young men enters the success-contest every year as rawrecruits! Many of them are country youths flocking to the cities to buysuccess. Their young ambitions have been excited by some book, or firedby the story of some signal success, and they dream of becoming Astorsor Girards, Stewarts or Wanamakers, Vanderbilts or Goulds, Lincolns orGarfields, until their innate energy impels them to try their ownfortune in the magic metropolis. But what are you willing to pay for"success, " as you call it, young man? Do you realize what that wordmeans in a great city in the nineteenth century, where men grow gray atthirty and die of old age at forty, --where the race of life has becomeso intense that the runners are treading on the heels of those beforethem; and "woe to him who stops to tie his shoestring?" Do you know thatonly two or three out of every hundred will ever win permanent success, and only because they have kept everlastingly at it; and that the restwill sooner or later fail and many die in poverty because they havegiven up the struggle. 

There are multitudes of men who never rely wholly upon themselves andachieve independence. They are like summer vines, which never grow evenligneous, but stretch out a thousand little hands to grasp the strongershrubs; and if they cannot reach them, they lie dishevelled in thegrass, hoof-trodden, and beaten of every storm. It will be found thatthe first real movement upward will not take place until, in a spirit ofresolute self-denial, indolence, so natural to almost every one, ismastered. Necessity is, usually, the spur that sets the sluggishenergies in motion. Poverty, therefore, is often of inestimable value asan incentive to the best endeavors of which we are capable. 

CHAPTER VII. 

FOUNDATION STONES. 

 In all matters, before beginning, a diligent preparation should be made. --CICERO. 

 How great soever a genius may be, . .. Certain it is that he will never shine in his full lustre, nor shed the full influence he is capable of, unless to his own experience he adds that of other men and other ages. --BOLINGBROKE. 

 It is for want of the little that human means must add to the wonderful capacity for improvement, born in man, that by far the greatest part of the intellect, innate in our race, perishes undeveloped and unknown. --EDWARD EVERETT. 

 If any man fancies that there is some easier way of gaining a dollar than by squarely earning it, he has lost his clue to his way through this mortal labyrinth and must henceforth wander as chance may dictate. --HORACE GREELEY. 

 What we do upon some great occasion will probably depend on what we already are; and what we are will be the result of previous years of self-discipline. --H. P. LIDDON. 

 Learn to labor and to wait. --LONGFELLOW. 

"What avails all this sturdiness?" asked an oak tree which had grownsolitary for two hundred years, bitterly handled by frosts and wrestledby winds. "Why am I to stand here useless? My roots are anchored inrifts of rocks; no herds can lie down under my shadow; I am far abovesinging birds, that seldom come to rest among my leaves; I am set as amark for storms, that bend and tear me; my fruit is serviceable for noappetite; it had been better for me to have been a mushroom, gathered inthe morning for some poor man's table, than to be a hundred-year oak, good for nothing. "

While it yet spoke, the axe was hewing at its base. It died in sadness, saying as it fell, "Weary ages for nothing have I lived. "

The axe completed its work. By and by the trunk and root form the kneesof a stately ship, bearing the country's flag around the world. Otherparts form keel and ribs of merchantmen, and having defied the mountainstorms, they now equally resist the thunder of the waves and the murkythreat of scowling hurricanes. Other parts are laid into floors, orwrought into wainscoting, or carved for frames of noble pictures, orfashioned into chairs that embosom the weakness of old age. Thus thetree, in dying, came not to its end, but to its beginning of life. Itvoyaged the world. It grew to parts of temples and dwellings. It heldupon its surface the soft tread of children and the tottering steps ofpatriarchs. It rocked in the cradle. It swayed the limbs of age by thechimney corner, and heard, secure within, the roar of those old, unwearied tempests that once surged about its mountain life. All itsearly struggles and hardships had enabled it to grow tough and hard andbeautiful of grain, alike useful and ornamental. 

"Sir, you have been to college, I presume?" asked an illiterate butboastful exhorter of a clergyman. "Yes, sir, " was the reply. "I amthankful, " said the former, "that the Lord opened my mouth without anylearning. " "A similar event, " retorted the clergyman, "happened inBalaam's time. "

Why not allow the schoolboy to erase from his list of studies allsubjects that appear to him useless? Would he not erase every thingwhich taxed his pleasure and freedom? Would he not obey the call of hisblood, rather than the advice of his teacher? Ignorant men who have mademoney tell him that the study of geography is useless; his tea will comeover the sea to him whether he knows where China is or not; whatdifference does it make whether verbs agree with their subjects or not?Why waste time learning geometry or algebra? Who keeps accounts bythese? Learning spoils a man for business, they tell him; they begrudgethe time and money spent in education. They want cheap and rapid transitthrough college for their children. Veneer will answer every practicalpurpose for them, instead of solid mahogany, or even paint and pine willdo. 

It is said that the editors of the Dictionary of American Biographywho diligently searched the records of living and dead Americans, found15, 142 names worthy of a place in their six volumes of annals ofsuccessful men, and 5326, or more than one-third of them, werecollege-educated men. One in forty of the college educated attained asuccess worthy of mention, and but one in 10, 000 of those not soeducated; so that the college-bred man had two hundred and fifty timesthe chances for success that others had. Medical records, it is said, show that but five per cent. Of the practicing physicians of the UnitedStates are college graduates; and yet forty-six per cent. Of thephysicians who became locally famous enough to be mentioned by thoseeditors came from that small five per cent. Of college educated persons. Less than four per cent. Of the lawyers were college-bred, yet theyfurnished more than one-half of all who became successful. Not one percent. Of the business men of the country were college educated, yet thatsmall fraction of college-bred men had seventeen times the chances ofsuccess that their fellow men of business had. In brief, thecollege-educated lawyer has fifty per cent. More chances for successthan those not so favored; the college-educated physician, forty-six percent. More; the author, thirty-seven per cent. More; the statesman, thirty-three per cent. ; the clergyman, fifty-eight per cent. ; theeducator, sixty-one per cent. ; the scientist, sixty-three per cent. Youshould therefore get the best and most complete education that it ispossible for you to obtain. 

Knowledge, then, is one of the secret keys which unlock the hiddenmysteries of a successful life. 

"I do not remember, " said Beecher, "a book in all the depths oflearning, nor a scrap in literature, nor a work in all the schools ofart, from which its author has derived a permanent renown, that is notknown to have been long and patiently elaborated. "

"You are a fool to stick so close to your work all the time, " said oneof Vanderbilt's young friends; "we are having our fun while we areyoung, for when will we if not now?" But Cornelius was either earningmore money by working overtime, or saving what he had earned, or at homeasleep, recruiting for the next day's labor and preparing for a largeharvest later. Like all successful men, he made finance a study. When heentered the railroad business, it was estimated that his fortune wasthirty-five or forty million dollars. 

"The spruce young spark, " says Sizer, "who thinks chiefly of hismustache and boots and shiny hat, of getting along nicely and easilyduring the day, and talking about the theatre, the opera, or a fasthorse, ridiculing the faithful young fellow who came to learn thebusiness and make a man of himself, because he will not join in wastinghis time in dissipation, will see the day, if his useless life is notearlier blasted by vicious indulgences, when he will be glad to accept asituation from his fellow-clerk whom he now ridicules and affects todespise, when the latter shall stand in the firm, dispensing benefitsand acquiring fortune. "

"When a man has done his work, " says Ruskin, "and nothing can any way bematerially altered in his fate, let him forget his toil, and jest withhis fate if he will; but what excuse can you find for willfulness ofthought at the very time when every crisis of fortune hangs on yourdecisions? A youth thoughtless, when all the happiness of his homeforever depends on the chances or the passions of the hour! A youththoughtless, when the career of all his days depends on the opportunityof a moment! A youth thoughtless, when his every action is afoundation-stone of future conduct, and every imagination a foundationof life or death! Be thoughtless in any after years, rather thannow--though, indeed, there is only one place where a man may be noblythoughtless, his deathbed. Nothing should ever be left to be donethere. "

"On to Berlin, " was the shout of the French army in July, 1870; but, tothe astonishment of the world, the French forces were cut in two androlled as by a tidal wave into Metz and around Sedan. Soon two Frencharmies and the Emperor surrendered, and German troopers paraded thestreets of captured Paris. 

But as men thought it out, as Professor Wells tells us, they came to seethat it was not France that was beaten, but only Louis Napoleon and alot of nobles, influential only because they bore titles or werefavorites. Louis Napoleon, the feeble bearer of a great name, wasemperor because of that name and criminal daring. By a series of happyaccidents he had gained credit in the Crimean War, and at Magenta andSolferino. But the unmasking time came in the Franco-Prussian War, as italways comes when sham, artificial toy-men meet genuine self-made men. And such were the German leaders, --William, strong, upright, warlike, "every inch a king;" Von Roon, Minister of War, a master ofadministrative detail; Bismarck, the master mind of European politics;and, above all, Von Moltke, chief of staff, who hurled armies bytelegraph, as he sat at his cabinet, as easily as a master moveschessmen against a stupid opponent. 

Said Captain Bingham: "You can have no idea of the wonderful machinethat the German army is and how well it is prepared for war. A chart ismade out which shows just what must be done in the case of wars withthe different nations. And every officer's place in the scheme is laidout beforehand. There is a schedule of trains which will supersede allother schedules the moment war is declared, and this is so arranged thatthe commander of the army here could telegraph to any officer to takesuch a train and go to such a place at a moment's notice. When theFranco-Prussian War was declared, Von Moltke was awakened at midnightand told of the fact. He said coolly to the official who aroused him, 'Go to pigeonhole No. ---- in my safe and take a paper from it andtelegraph as there directed to the different troops of the empire. ' Hethen turned over and went to sleep and awoke at his usual hour in themorning. Every one else in Berlin was excited about the war, but VonMoltke took his morning walk as usual, and a friend who met him said, 'General, you seem to be taking it very easy. Aren't you afraid of thesituation? I should think you would be busy. ' 'Ah, ' replied Von Moltke, 'all of my work for this time has been done long beforehand, andeverything that can be done now has been done. '"

"A rare man this Von Moltke!" exclaims Professor Wells; "one who madehimself ready for his opportunities beyond all men known to the modernworld. Of an impoverished family, he rose very slowly and by his ownmerit. He yielded to no temptation, vice, or dishonesty, of course, norto the greater and ever present temptation to idleness, for heconstantly worked to the limit of human endurance. He was ready forevery emergency, not by accident, but because he made himself ready bypainstaking labor, before the opportunity came. His favorite motto was, '_Help yourself and others will help you_. ' Hundreds of his age in thePrussian army were of nobler birth, thousands of greater fortune, but hemade himself superior to them all by extraordinary fidelity anddiligence. 

"The greatest master of strategy the world has ever seen was sixty-sixyears at school to himself before he was ready for his task. Though bornwith the century, and an army officer at nineteen, he was an old manwhen, in 1866, as Prussian chief of staff, he crushed Austria at Sadowaand drove her out of Germany. Four years later the silent, modestsoldier of seventy, ready for the still greater opportunity, smoteFrance, and changed the map of Europe. Glory and the field-marshal'sbaton, after fifty-one years of hard work! No wonder Louis Napoleon wasbeaten by such men as he. All Louis Napoleons have been, and always willbe. Opportunity always finds out frauds. It does not make men, but showsthe world what they have made of themselves. "

Sir Henry Havelock joined the army of India in his twenty-eighth year, and waited till he was sixty-two for the opportunity to show himselffitted to command and skillful to plan. During those four and thirtyyears of waiting, he was busy preparing himself for that march toLucknow which was to make him famous as a soldier. 

Farragut, "The viking of our western clime Who made his mast a throne, "

began his naval career as a mere boy, and was sixty-four years oldbefore he had an opportunity to distinguish himself; but when the greattest of his life came, the reserve of half a century's preparation madehim master of the situation. 

Alexander Hamilton said, "Men give me credit for genius. All the geniusI have lies just in this: when I have a subject in hand I study itprofoundly. Day and night it is before me. I explore it in all itsbearings. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort which I makethe people are pleased to call the fruit of genius; it is the fruit oflabor and thought. " The law of labor is equally binding on genius andmediocrity. 

"Fill up the cask! fill up the cask!" said old Dr. Bellamy when asked bya young clergyman for advice about the composition of sermons. "Fill upthe cask! and then if you tap it anywhere you will get a good stream. But if you put in but little, it will dribble, dribble, dribble, andyou must tap, tap, tap, and then you get but a small stream, after all. "

"The merchant is in a dangerous position, " says Dr. W. W. Patton, "whosemeans are in goods trusted out all over the country on long credits, andwho in an emergency has no money in the bank upon which to draw. A heavydeposit, subject to a sight-draft, is the only position of strength. Andhe only is intellectually strong, who has made heavy deposits in thebank of memory, and can draw upon his faculties at any time, accordingto the necessities of the case. "

They say that more life, if not more labor, was spent on the pilesbeneath the St. Petersburg church of St. Isaac's, to get a foundation, than on all the magnificent marbles and malachite which have since beenlodged in it. 

Fifty feet of Bunker Hill Monument is under ground, unseen, andunappreciated by the thousands who tread about that historic shaft. Therivers of India run under ground, unseen, unheard, by the millions whotramp above, but are they therefore lost? Ask the golden harvest wavingabove them if it feels the water flowing beneath? The superstructure ofa lifetime cannot stand upon the foundation of a day. 

C. H. Parkhurst says that in manhood, as much as in house-building, thefoundation keeps asserting itself all the way from the first floor tothe roof. The stones laid in the underpinning may be coarse andinelegant, but, even so, each such stone perpetuates itself in silentecho clear up through to the finial. The body is in that respect like anold Stradivarius violin, the ineffable sweetness of whose music isoutcome and quotation from the coarse fibre of the case upon which itsstrings are strung. It is a very pleasant delusion that what we call thehigher qualities and energies of a person maintain that self-centeredkind of existence that enables them to discard and contemn alldependence upon what is lower and less refined than themselves, but itis a delusion that always wilts in an atmosphere of fact. Climb high aswe like our ladder will still require to rest on the ground; and it isprobable that the keenest intellectual intuition, and the most delicatethrob of passion would, if analysis could be carried so far, bediscovered to have its connections with the rather material affair thatwe know as the body. 

Lincoln took the postmastership for the sake of reading all the papersthat came to town. He read everything he could lay his hands on; theBible, Shakespeare, Pilgrim's Progress, Life of Washington and Life ofFranklin, Life of Henry Clay, Æsop's Fables; he read them over and overagain until he could almost repeat them by heart; but he never read anovel in his life. His education came from the newspapers and from hiscontact with men and things. After he read a book he would write out ananalysis of it. What a grand sight to see this long, lank, backwoodsstudent, lying before the fire in a log cabin without floor or windows, after everybody else was abed, devouring books he had borrowed but couldnot afford to buy!

"I have been watching the careers of young men by the thousand in thisbusy city of New York for over thirty years, " said Dr. Cuyler, "and Ifind that the chief difference between the successful and the failureslies in the single element of staying power. Permanent success isoftener won by holding on than by sudden dash, however brilliant. Theeasily discouraged, who are pushed back by a straw, are all the timedropping to the rear--to perish or to be carried along on the stretcherof charity. They who understand and practice Abraham Lincoln's homelymaxim of 'pegging away' have achieved the solidest success. "

It is better to deserve success than to merely have it; few deserve itwho do not attain it. There is no failure in this country for thosewhose personal habits are good, and who follow some honest callingindustriously, unselfishly, and purely. If one desires to succeed, hemust pay the price, work. 

No matter how weak a power may be, rational use will make it stronger. No matter how awkward your movements may be, how obtuse your senses, orhow crude your thought, or how unregulated your desires, you may bypatient discipline acquire, slowly indeed but with infallible certainty, grace and freedom of action, clearness and acuteness of perception, strength and precision of thought, and moderation of desire. 

It would go very far to destroy the absurd and pernicious association ofgenius and idleness, to show that the greatest poets, orators, statesmen, and historians--men of the most imposing and brillianttalents--have actually labored as hard as the makers of dictionaries andarrangers of indexes; and the most obvious reason why they have beensuperior to other men, is, that they have taken more pains. 

Even the great genius, Lord Bacon, left large quantities of materialentitled "Sudden thoughts set down for use. " John Foster was anindefatigable worker. "He used to hack, split, twist, and pull up by theroots, or practice any other severity on whatever did not please him. "Chalmers was asked in London what Foster was doing. "Hard at it" hesaid, "at the rate of a line a week. "

When a young lawyer, Daniel Webster once looked in vain through all thelibraries near him, and then ordered at an expense of $50 the necessarybooks, to obtain authorities and precedents in a case in which hisclient was a poor blacksmith. He won his case, but, on account of thepoverty of his client, only charged $15, thus losing heavily on thebooks bought, to say nothing of his time. Years after, as he was passingthrough New York city, he was consulted by Aaron Burr on an importantbut puzzling case then pending before the Supreme Court. Webster saw ina moment that it was just like the blacksmith's case, an intricatequestion of title, which he had solved so thoroughly that it was to himsimple as the multiplication table. Going back to the time of CharlesII. , he gave the law and precedents involved with such readiness andaccuracy of sequence that Burr asked, in great surprise: "Mr. Webster, have you been consulted before in this case?"

"Most certainly not. I never heard of your case till this evening. "

"Very well, " said Burr, "proceed. " And when he had finished, Websterreceived a fee that paid him liberally for all the time and trouble hehad spent for his early client. 

What the age wants is men who have the nerve and the grit to work andwait, whether the world applaud or hiss. It wants a Bancroft, who canspend twenty-six years on the "History of the United States;" a NoahWebster, who can devote thirty-six years to a dictionary; a Gibbon, whocan plod for twenty years on the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire;"a Mirabeau, who can struggle on for forty years before he has a chanceto show his vast reserve, destined to shake an empire; a Farragut, a VonMoltke, who have the persistence to work and wait for half a century fortheir first great opportunities; a Garfield, burning his lamp fifteenminutes later than a rival student in his academy; a Grant, fighting onin heroic silence, when denounced by his brother generals andpoliticians everywhere; a Field's untiring perseverance, spending yearsand a fortune laying a cable when all the world called him a fool; aMichael Angelo, working seven long years decorating the Sistine Chapelwith his matchless "Creation" and the "Last Judgment, " refusing allremuneration therefor, lest his pencil might catch the taint of avarice;a Titian, spending seven years on the "Last Supper;" a Stephenson, working fifteen years on a locomotive; a Watt, twenty years on acondensing engine; a Lady Franklin, working incessantly for twelve longyears to rescue her husband from the polar seas; a Thurlow Weed, walkingtwo miles through the snow with rags tied around his feet for shoes, toborrow the history of the French Revolution, and eagerly devouring itbefore the sap-bush fire; a Milton, elaborating "Paradise Lost" in aworld he could not see, and then selling it for fifteen pounds; aThackeray, struggling on cheerfully after his "Vanity Fair" was refusedby a dozen publishers; a Balzac, toiling and waiting in a lonely garret, whom neither poverty, debt, nor hunger could discourage or intimidate;not daunted by privations, not hindered by discouragements. It wants menwho can work and wait. 

That is done soon enough which is done well. Soon ripe, soon rotten. Hethat would enjoy the fruit must not gather the flower. He who isimpatient to become his own master is more likely to become his ownslave. Better believe yourself a dunce and work away than a genius andbe idle. One year of trained thinking is worth more than a whole collegecourse of mental absorption of a vast series of undigested facts. Thefacility with which the world swallows up the ordinary college graduatewho thought he was going to dazzle mankind should bid you pause andreflect. But just as certainly as man was created not to crawl on allfours in the depths of primeval forests, but to develop his mental andmoral faculties, just so certainly he needs education, and only by meansof it will he become what he ought to become, --man, in the highestsense of the word. Ignorance is not simply the negation of knowledge, it is the misdirection of the mind. "One step in knowledge, " saysBulwer, "is one step from sin; one step from sin is one step nearer toHeaven. "

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE CONQUEST OF OBSTACLES. 

 Nature, when she adds difficulties, adds brains. --EMERSON. 

 Exigencies create the necessary ability to meet and conquer them. --WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

 Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous difficulties. --SPURGEON. 

 The rugged metal of the mine Must burn before its surface shine. --BYRON. 

 When a man looks through a tear in his own eye, that is a lens which opens reaches in the unknown, and reveals orbs no telescope could do. --BEECHER. 

 No man ever worked his way in a dead calm. --JOHN NEAL. 

 "Kites rise against, not with, the wind. "

 Then welcome each rebuff, That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting, that bids not sit nor stand, but go. --BROWNING. 

"What a fine profession ours would be if there were no gibbets!" saidone of two highwaymen who chanced to pass a gallows. "Tut, youblockhead, " replied the other, "gibbets are the making of us; for, ifthere were no gibbets, every one would be a highwayman. " Just so withevery art, trade, or pursuit; it is the difficulties that scare and keepout unworthy competitors. 

"Life, " says a philosopher, "refuses to be so adjusted as to eliminatefrom it all strife and conflict and pain. There are a thousand tasks, that, in larger interests than ours, must be done, whether we want themor no. The world refuses to walk upon tiptoe, so that we may be able tosleep. It gets up very early and stays up very late, and all the whilethere is the conflict of myriads of hammers and saws and axes with thestubborn material that in no other way can be made to serve its use anddo its work for man. And then, too, these hammers and axes are notwielded without strain or pang, but swung by the millions of toilers wholabor with their cries and groans and tears. Nay, our temple building, whether it be for God or man, exacts its bitter toll, and fills lifewith cries and blows. The thousand rivalries of our daily business, thefierce animosities when we are beaten, the even fiercer exultation whenwe have beaten, the crashing blows of disaster, the piercing scream ofdefeat--these things we have not yet gotten rid of, nor in this lifeever will. Why should we wish to get rid of them? We are here, mybrother, to be hewed and hammered and planed in God's quarry and onGod's anvil for a nobler life to come. " Only the muscle that is used isdeveloped. 

"Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for betterthings, " said Beecher. "Far up the mountain side lies a block ofgranite, and says to itself, 'How happy am I in my serenity--above thewinds, above the trees, almost above the flight of birds! Here I rest, age after age, and nothing disturbs me. '

"Yet what is it? It is only a bare block of granite, jutting out of thecliff, and its happiness is the happiness of death. 

"By and by comes the miner, and with strong and repeated strokes hedrills a hole in its top, and the rock says, 'What does this mean?' Thenthe black powder is poured in, and with a blast that makes the mountainecho, the block is blown asunder, and goes crashing down into thevalley. 'Ah!' it exclaims as it falls, 'why this rending?' Then comesaws to cut and fashion it; and humbled now, and willing to be nothing, it is borne away from the mountain and conveyed to the city. Now it ischiseled and polished, till, at length, finished in beauty, by block andtackle it is raised, with mighty hoistings, high in air, to be thetop-stone on some monument of the country's glory. "

"It is this scantiness of means, this continual deficiency, thisconstant hitch, this perpetual struggle to keep the head above water andthe wolf from the door, that keeps society from falling to pieces. Letevery man have a few more dollars than he wants, and anarchy wouldfollow. "

"Do you wish to live without a trial?" asks a modern teacher. "Then youwish to die but half a man. Without trial you cannot guess at your ownstrength. Men do not learn to swim on a table. They must go into deepwater and buffet the waves. Hardship is the native soil of manhood andself-reliance. Trials are rough teachers, but rugged schoolmasters makerugged pupils. A man who goes through life prosperous, and comes to hisgrave without a wrinkle, is not half a man. Difficulties are God'serrands. And when we are sent upon them we should esteem it a proof ofGod's confidence. We should reach after the highest good. "

Suddenly, with much jarring and jolting, an electric car came to astandstill just in front of a heavy truck that was headed in an oppositedirection. The huge truck wheels were sliding uselessly round on the cartracks that were wet and slippery from rain. All the urging of theteamster and the straining of the horses were in vain--until themotorman quietly tossed a shovelful of sand on the track under the heavywheels, and then the truck lumbered on its way. "Friction is a very goodthing, " remarked a passenger. 

There is a beautiful tale of Scandinavian mythology. A hero, under thepromise of becoming a demi-god, is bidden in the celestial halls toperform three test-acts of prowess. He is to drain the drinking-horn ofThor. Then he must run a race with a courser so fleet that he fairlyspurns the ground under his flying footsteps. Then he must wrestle witha toothless old woman, whose sinewy hands, as wiry as eagle claws in thegrapple, make his very flesh to quiver. He is victorious in them all. But as the crown of success is placed upon his temples, he discovers forthe first time that he has had for his antagonist the three greatestforces of nature. He raced with thought, he wrestled with old age, hedrank the sea. Nature, like the God of nature, wrestles with us as afriend, not an enemy, wanting us to gain the victory, and wrestles withus that we may understand and enjoy her best blessings. Every greatestand highest earthly good has come to us unfolded and enriched by thisterrible wrestling with nature. 

A curious society still exists in Paris composed of dramatic authors whomeet once a month and dine together. Their number has no fixed limit, only every member to be eligible must have been hissed. An eminentdramatist is selected for chairman and holds the post for three months. His election generally follows close upon a splendid failure. Some ofthe world-famous ones have enjoyed this honor. Dumas, Jr. , Zola andOffenbach have all filled the chair and presided at the monthly dinner. These dinners are given on the last Friday of the month, and are said tobe extraordinarily hilarious. 

"I do believe God wanted a grand poem of that man, " said GeorgeMacdonald of Milton, "and so blinded him that he might be able to writeit. "

"Returned with thanks" has made many an author. Failure often leads aman to success by arousing his latent energy, by firing a dormantpurpose, by awakening powers which were sleeping. Men of mettle turndisappointments into helps as the oyster turns into pearls the sandwhich annoys it. 

"Let the adverse breath of criticism be to you only what the blast ofthe storm wind is to the eagle, --a force against him that lifts himhigher. "

"I do not see, " says Emerson, "how any man can afford, for the sake ofhis nerves and his nap, to spare any action in which he can partake. Itis pearls and rubies to his discourse. Drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom. The true scholar grudgesevery opportunity of action passed by as a loss of power. "

"Adversity is a severe instructor, " says Edmund Burke, "set over us byone who knows us better than we do ourselves, as He loves us better too. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This conflict with difficulty makes usacquainted with our object, and compels us to consider it in all itsrelations. It will not suffer us to be superficial. "

Strong characters, like the palm tree, seem to thrive best when mostabused. Men who have stood up bravely under great misfortune for yearsare often unable to bear prosperity. Their good fortune takes the springout of their energy, as the torrid zone enervates races accustomed to avigorous climate. Some people never come to themselves until baffled, rebuffed, thwarted, defeated, crushed, in the opinion of those aroundthem. Trials unlock their virtues; defeat is the threshold of theirvictory. 

"Every man who makes a fortune has been more than once a bankrupt, ifthe truth were known, " said Albion Tourgée. "Grant's failure as asubaltern made him commander-in-chief, and for myself, my failure toaccomplish what I set out to do led me to what I never had aspired to. "

"What is defeat?" asked Wendell Phillips. "Nothing but education. " And alife's disaster may become the landmark from which there has begun a newera, a broader life for man. 

"To make his way at the bar, " said an eminent jurist, "a young man mustlive like a hermit and work like a horse. There is nothing that does ayoung lawyer so much good as to be half starved. "

We are the victors of our opponents. They have developed in us the verypower by which we overcome them. Without their opposition we could neverhave braced and anchored and fortified ourselves, as the oak is bracedand anchored for its thousand battles with the tempests. Our trials, oursorrows, and our griefs develop us in a similar way. 

"Obstacles, " says Mitchell, "are great incentives. I lived for wholeyears upon Virgil and found myself well off. " Poverty, Horace tells us, drove him to poetry. 

Nothing more unmans a man than to take away from him the spur ofnecessity, which urges him onward and upward to the goal of hisambition. Man is naturally lazy, and wealth induces indolence. The greatobject of life is development, the unfolding and drawing out of ourpowers, and whatever tempts us to a life of indolence or inaction, or toseek pleasure merely, whatever furnishes us a crutch when we can developour muscles better by walking, all helps, guides, props, whatever temptsto a life of inaction, in whatever guise it may come, is a curse. Ialways pity the boy or girl with inherited wealth, for the temptation tohide their talents in a napkin, undeveloped, is very, very great. It isnot natural for them to walk when they can ride, to go alone when theycan be helped. 

Quentin Matsys was a blacksmith at Antwerp. When in his twentieth yearhe wished to marry the daughter of a painter. The father refused hisconsent. "Wert thou a painter, " said he, "she should be thine; but ablacksmith--never!" "_I will be_ a painter, " said the young man. Heapplied to his new art with so much perseverance that in a short time heproduced pictures which gave a promise of the highest excellence. Hegained for his reward the fair hand for which he sighed, and rose erelong to a high rank in his profession. 

Take two acorns from the same tree, as nearly alike as possible; plantone on a hill by itself, and the other in the dense forest, and watchthem grow. The oak standing alone is exposed to every storm. Its rootsreach out in every direction, clutching the rocks and piercing deep intothe earth. Every rootlet lends itself to steady the growing giant, as ifin anticipation of fierce conflict with the elements. Sometimes itsupward growth seems checked for years, but all the while it has beenexpending its energy in pushing a root across a large rock to gain afirmer anchorage. Then it shoots proudly aloft again, prepared to defythe hurricane. The gales which sport so rudely with its wide branchesfind more than their match, and only serve still further to toughenevery minutest fibre from pith to bark. 

The acorn planted in the deep forest shoots up a weak, slender sapling. Shielded by its neighbors, it feels no need of spreading its roots farand wide for support. 

Take two boys, as nearly alike as possible. Place one in the countryaway from the hothouse culture and refinements of the city, with onlythe district school, the Sunday school, and a few books. Remove wealthand props of every kind; and, if he has the right kind of material inhim, he will thrive. Every obstacle overcome lends him strength for thenext conflict. If he falls, he rises with more determination thanbefore. Like a rubber ball, the harder the obstacle he meets the higherhe rebounds. Obstacles and opposition are but apparatus of the gymnasiumin which the fibres of his manhood are developed. He compels respect andrecognition from those who have ridiculed his poverty. Put the other boyin a Vanderbilt family. Give him French and German nurses; gratify everywish. Place him under the tutelage of great masters and send him toHarvard. Give him thousands a year for spending money, and let himtravel extensively. 

The two meet. The city lad is ashamed of his country brother. The plain, threadbare clothes, hard hands, tawny face, and awkward manner of thecountry boy make sorry contrast with the genteel appearance of theother. The poor boy bemoans his hard lot, regrets that he has "no chancein life, " and envies the city youth. He thinks that it is a cruelProvidence that places such a wide gulf between them. They meet again asmen, but how changed! It is as easy to distinguish the sturdy, self-mademan from the one who has been propped up all his life by wealth, position, and family influence, as it is for the shipbuilder to tell thedifference between the plank from the rugged mountain oak and one fromthe sapling of the forest. If you think there is no difference, placeeach plank in the bottom of a ship, and test them in a hurricane at sea. 

The athlete does not carry the gymnasium away with him, but he carriesthe skill and muscle which give him his reputation. 

The lessons you learn at school will give you strength and skill inafter life, and power, just in proportion to the accuracy, the clearnessof perception with which you learn your lessons. The school was yourgymnasium. You do not carry away the Greek and Latin text-books, thegeometry and algebra into your occupations any more than the athletecarries the apparatus of the gymnasium, but you carry away the skill andthe power if you have been painstaking, accurate and faithful. 

"It is in me, and it _shall_ come out!" And it did. For RichardBrinsley Sheridan became the most brilliant, eloquent and amazingstatesman of his day. Yet if his first efforts had been but moderatelysuccessful, he might have been content with mere mediocrity. It was hisdefeats that nerved him to strive for eminence and win it. But it tookhard, persistent work in his case to secure it, just as it did in thatof so many others. 

Byron was stung into a determination to go to the top by a scathingcriticism of his first book, "Hours of Idleness, " published when he wasbut nineteen years of age. Macaulay said, "There is scarce an instancein history of so sudden a rise to so dizzy an eminence as Byronreached. " In a few years he stood by the side of such men as Scott, Southey and Campbell. Many an orator like "stuttering Jack Curran, " or"Orator Mum, " as he was once called, has been spurred into eloquence byridicule and abuse. 

Where the sky is gray and the climate unkindly, where the soil yieldsnothing save to the diligent hand, and life itself cannot be supportedwithout incessant toil, man has reached his highest range of physicaland intellectual development. 

The most beautiful and the strongest animals, as a rule, have come fromthe same narrow belt of latitude which has produced the heroes of theworld. 

The most beautiful as well as the strongest characters are not developedin warm climates, where man finds his bread ready made on trees, andwhere exertion is a great effort, but rather in a trying climate and ona stubborn soil. It is no chance that returns to the Hindoo ryot a pennyand to the American laborer a dollar for his daily toil; that makesMexico with her mineral wealth poor, and New England with its graniteand ice rich. It is rugged necessity, it is the struggle to obtain, itis poverty the priceless spur, that develops the stamina of manhood, andcalls the race out of barbarism. Labor found the world a wilderness andhas made it a garden. 

The law of adaptation by which conditions affect an organism is simpleand well known. It is that which callouses the palm of the oarsman, strengthens the waist of the wrestler, fits the back to its burden. Itinexorably compels the organism to adapt itself to its conditions, tolike them, and so to survive them. 

As soon as young eagles can fly the old birds tumble them out and tearthe down and feathers from their nest. The rude and rough experience ofthe eaglet fits him to become the bold king of birds, fierce and expertin pursuing his prey. 

Benjamin Franklin ran away and George Law was turned out of doors. Thrown upon their own resources, they early acquired the energy andskill to overcome difficulties. 

Boys who are bound out, crowded out, kicked out, usually "turn out, "while those who do not have these disadvantages frequently fail to "comeout. "

From an aimless, idle and useless brain, emergencies often call outpowers and virtues before unknown and unsuspected. How often we see ayoung man develop astounding ability and energy after the death of aparent or the loss of a fortune, or after some other calamity hasknocked the props and crutches from under him. The prison has roused theslumbering fire in many a noble mind. "Robinson Crusoe" was written inprison. The "Pilgrim's Progress" appeared in Bedford Jail. The "Life andTimes" of Baxter, Eliot's "Monarchia of Man, " and Penn's "No Cross, NoCrown, " were written by prisoners. Sir Walter Raleigh wrote "The Historyof the World" during his imprisonment of thirteen years. Luthertranslated the Bible while confined in the Castle of Wartburg. Fortwenty years Dante worked in exile, and even under sentence of death. His works were burned in public after his death; but genius will notburn. 

Adversity exasperates fools, dejects cowards, draws out the faculties ofthe wise and industrious, puts the modest to the necessity of tryingtheir skill, awes the opulent, and makes the idle industrious. Neitherdo uninterrupted success and prosperity qualify men for usefulness andhappiness. The storms of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse thefaculties, and excite the invention, prudence, skill and fortitude ofthe voyager. The martyrs of ancient times, in bracing their minds tooutward calamities, acquired a loftiness of purpose and a moral heroismworth a lifetime of softness and security. A man upon whom continuoussunshine falls is like the earth in August: he becomes parched and dryand hard and close-grained. Men have drawn from adversity the elementsof greatness. If you have the blues, go and see the poorest and sickestfamilies within your knowledge. The darker the setting, the brighter thediamond. Don't run about and tell acquaintances that you have beenunfortunate; people do not like to have unfortunate men foracquaintances. 

This is the crutch age. "Helps" and "aids" are advertised everywhere. Wehave institutes, colleges, universities, teachers, books, libraries, newspapers, magazines. Our thinking is done for us. Our problems are allworked out in "explanations" and "keys. " Our boys are too often tutoredthrough college with very little study. "Short roads" and "abridgedmethods" are characteristic of the century. Ingenious methods are usedeverywhere to get the drudgery out of the college course. Newspapersgive us our politics, and preachers our religion. Self-help andself-reliance are getting old fashioned. Nature, as if conscious ofdelayed blessings, has rushed to man's relief with her wondrous forces, and undertakes to do the world's drudgery and emancipate him from Eden'scurse. 

CHAPTER IX. 

DEAD IN EARNEST. 

 It is the live coal that kindles others, not the dead. What made Demosthenes the greatest of all orators was that he appeared the most entirely possessed by the feelings he wished to inspire. The effect produced by Charles Fox, who by the exaggerations of party spirit, was often compared to Demosthenes, seems to have arisen wholly from this earnestness, which made up for the want of almost every grace, both of manner and style. --ANON. 

 Twelve poor men taken out of boats and creeks, without any help of learning, should conquer the world to the cross. --STEPHEN CARNOCK. 

 For his heart was in his work, and the heart Giveth grace unto every art. --LONGFELLOW. 

 He did it with all his heart and prospered. --II. CHRONICLES. 

 The only conclusive evidence of a man's sincerity is that he gives himself for a principle. Words, money, all things else are comparatively easy to give away; but when a man makes a gift of his daily life and practice, it is plain that the truth, whatever it may be, has taken possession of him. --LOWELL. 

"The emotions, " says Whipple, "may all be included in the single word'enthusiasm, ' or that impulsive force which liberates the mental powerfrom the ice of timidity as spring loosens the streams from the graspof winter, and sends them forth in a rejoicing rush. The mind of youth, when impelled by this original strength and enthusiasm of Nature, iskeen, eager, inquisitive, intense, audacious, rapidly assimilating factsinto faculties and knowledge into power, and above all teeming with thatjoyous fullness of creative life which radiates thoughts asinspirations, and magnetizes as well as informs. "

"Columbus, my hero, " exclaims Carlyle, "royalist sea-king of all! It isno friendly environment this of thine, in the waste, deep waters; aroundthee mutinous discouraged souls, behind thee disgrace and ruin, beforethee the unpenetrated veil of night. Brother, these wildwater-mountains, bounding from their deep bases (ten miles deep, I amtold), are not there on thy behalf! Meseems _they_ have other work thanfloating thee forward:--and the huge winds, that sweep from Ursa Majorto the tropics and equator, dancing their giant-waltz through thekingdoms of chaos and immensity, they care little about filling rightlyor filling wrongly the small shoulder-of-mutton sails in this cockleskiff of thine! Thou art not among articulate-speaking friends, mybrother; thou art among immeasurable dumb monsters, tumbling, howlingwide as the world here. Secret, far-off, invisible to all hearts butthine, there lies a help in them: see how thou wilt get at that. Patiently thou wilt wait till the mad southwester spend itself, savingthyself by dexterous science of defence the while: valiantly, with swiftdecision, wilt thou strike in, when the favoring east wind, thepossible, springs up. Mutiny of men thou wilt sternly repress; weakness, despondency, thou wilt cheerily encourage: thou wilt swallow downcomplaint, unreason, weariness, weakness of others and thyself;--howmuch wilt thou swallow down? There shall be a depth of silence in thee, deeper than this sea, which is but ten miles deep: a silenceunsoundable; known to God only. Thou shalt be a great man. Yes, myworld-soldier, thou of the world marine-service, --thou wilt have to begreater than this tumultuous unmeasured world here round thee is: thou, in thy strong soul, as with wrestler's arms, shall embrace it, harnessit down; and make it bear thee on, --to new Americas, or whither Godwills!"

With what concentration of purpose did Washington put the whole weightof his character into the scales of our cause in the Revolution! Withwhat earnest singleness of aim did Lincoln in the cabinet, Grant in thefield, throw his whole soul into the contest of our civil war?

The power of Phillips Brooks, at which men wondered, lay in histremendous earnestness. 

"No matter what your work is, " says Emerson, "let it be yours; no matterif you are a tinker or preacher, blacksmith or president, let what youare doing be organic, let it be in your bones, and you open the door bywhich the affluence of heaven and earth shall stream into you. " Again, he says: "God will not have His works made manifest by cowards. A man isrelieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done hisbest; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt, his geniusdeserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope. "

"I do not know how it is with others when speaking on an importantquestion, " said Henry Clay; "but on such occasions I seem to beunconscious of the external world. Wholly engrossed by the subjectbefore me, I lose all sense of personal identity, of time, or ofsurrounding objects. "

"I have been so busy for twenty years trying to save the souls of otherpeople, " said Livingstone, "that I had forgotten that I have one of myown until a savage auditor asked me if I felt the influence of thereligion I was advocating. "

"Well, I've worked hard enough for it, " said Malibran when a criticexpressed his admiration of her D in alt, reached by running up threeoctaves from low D; "I've been chasing it for a month. I pursued iteverywhere, --when I was dressing, when I was doing my hair; and at lastI found it on the toe of a shoe that I was putting on. "

"People smile at the enthusiasm of youth, " said Charles Kingsley; "thatenthusiasm which they themselves secretly look back at with a sigh, perhaps unconscious that it is partly their own fault that they everlost it. "

"Should I die this minute, " said Nelson at an important crisis, "want offrigates would be found written on my heart. "

Said Dr. Arnold, the celebrated instructor: "I feel more and more theneed of intercourse with men who take life in earnest. It is painful tome to be always on the surface of things. Not that I wish for much ofwhat is called religious conversation. That is often apt to be on thesurface. But I want a sign which one catches by a sort of masonry, thata man knows what he is about in life. When I find this it opens my heartwith as fresh a sympathy as when I was twenty years younger. "

Archimedes, the greatest geometer of antiquity, was consulted by theking in regard to a gold crown suspected of being fraudulently alloyedwith silver. While considering the best method of detecting any fraud, he plunged into a full bathing tub; and, with the thought that the waterthat overflowed must be equal in weight to his body, he discovered themethod of obtaining the bulk of the crown compared with an equallyheavy mass of pure gold. Excited by the discovery, he ran through thestreets undressed, crying, "I have found it. "

Equally celebrated is his remark, "Give me where to stand and I willmove the world. "

His only remark to the Roman soldier who entered his room while engagedin geometrical study, was, "Don't step on my circle. "

Refusing to follow the soldier to Marcellus, who had captured the city, he was killed on the spot. He is said to have remarked, "My head, butnot my circle. "

"Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world, " saysEmerson, "is the triumph of some enthusiasm. The victories of the Arabsafter Mahomet, who, in a few years, from a small and mean beginning, established a larger empire than that of Rome, is an example. They didthey knew not what. The naked Derar, horsed on an idea, was found anovermatch for a troop of cavalry. The women fought like men andconquered the Roman men. They were miserably equipped, miserably fed. They were temperance troops. There was neither brandy nor flesh neededto feed them. They conquered Asia and Africa and Spain on barley. TheCaliph Omar's walking-stick struck more terror into those who saw itthan another man's sword. "

Horace Vernet's enthusiasm and devotion to the one idea of his life knewno bounds. He had himself lashed to the mast in a terrible gale on theMediterranean when all others on board were seized with terror, and withgreat delight sketched the towering waves which threatened every minuteto swallow the vessel. Several writers tell the story that a greatartist, Giotto, about to paint the crucifixion, induced a poor man tolet him bind him upon a cross in order that he might get a better ideaof the terrible scene that he was about to put upon the canvas. Hepromised faithfully that he would release his model in an hour, but tothe latter's horror the painter seized a dagger and plunged it into hisheart; and, while the blood was streaming from the ghastly wound, painted his death agony. 

Beecher was a very dull boy and was the last member of the family ofwhom anything was expected. He had a weak memory, and disliked study. Heshunned society and wanted to go to sea. Even when he went to collegemany of his classmates stood ahead of him, who have fallen intooblivion. But when he was converted his whole life changed: he was fullof enthusiasm, hopefulness and zeal. Nothing was too menial for him toundertake to carry his purpose. He chopped wood, built the fire in hislittle church in Lawrenceburg, Ind. , of only eighteen members, cleanedthe lamps, swept the floor and washed the windows. He built the fire, baked, washed, when his wife was ill. The pent-up enthusiasm of hisambitious life burst the barriers of his inhospitable surroundings untilhe blossomed out into America's greatest pulpit orator. 

When Handel was a little boy he bought a clavichord, hid it in theattic, and went there at night to play upon it, muffling the stringswith small pieces of fine woolen cloth so that the sounds should notwake the family. Michael Angelo neglected school to copy drawings whichhe dared not carry home. Murillo filled the margin of his school-bookwith drawings. Dryden read Polybius before he was ten years old. LeBrum, when a boy, drew with a piece of charcoal on the walls of thehouse. Pope wrote excellent verses at fourteen. Blaise Pascal, theFrench mathematician, composed at sixteen a tract on the conic sections. 

Professor Agassiz was so enthusiastic in his work and so loved thefishes, the fowl and the cattle that it is said these creatures woulddie for him to give him their skeletons. His father wanted him to fitfor commercial life, but the fish haunted him day and night. 

Confucius said that "he was so eager in the pursuit of knowledge that heforgot his food;" and that, "in the joy of its attainment, he forgot hissorrows;" and that "he did not even perceive that old age was comingon. "

"That boy tries to make himself useful, " said an employer of the errandboy, George W. Childs. It is this trying to be useful and helpful thatpromotes us in life. 

Once, when Mr. Harvey, an accomplished mathematician, was in abookseller's shop, he saw a poor lad of mean appearance enter and writesomething on a slip of paper and give it to the proprietor. On inquiryhe found this was a poor deaf boy, Kitto, who afterward became one ofthe most noted Biblical scholars in the world, and who wrote his firstbook in the poor-house. He had come to borrow a book. When a lad he hadfallen backward from a ladder thirty-five feet upon the pavement with aload of slates that he was carrying to the roof. The poor lad was sothirsty for books that he would borrow from booksellers who would loanthem to him out of pity, read them and return them. 

The _Youth's Companion_ says that Mr. Edison in his new biography--his"Life and Inventions"--describes the accidental method by which hediscovered the principle of the phonograph. There is a kind of accidentthat happens only to a certain kind of man. 

"I was singing to the mouthpiece of a telephone, " Mr. Edison says, "whenthe vibrations of the voice sent the fine steel point into my finger. That set me to thinking. If I could record the actions of the point, and send the point over the same surface afterward, I saw no reason whythe thing would not talk. 

"I tried the experiment first on a slip of telegraph paper and foundthat the point made an alphabet. I shouted the words 'Halloo! Halloo!'into the mouthpiece, ran the paper back over the steel point, and hearda faint 'Halloo! Halloo!' in return. 

"I determined to make a machine that would work accurately, and gave myassistants instructions, telling them what I had discovered. Theylaughed at me. That's the whole story. The phonograph is the result ofthe pricking of a finger. "

It is one thing to hit upon an idea, however, and another thing to carryit out to perfection. The machine would talk, but, like many youngchildren, it had difficulty with certain sounds--in the present casewith aspirants and sibilants. Mr. Edison's biographers say, but thestatement is somewhat exaggerated:

"He has frequently spent from fifteen to twenty hours daily, for six orseven months on a stretch, dinning the word 'Spezia, ' for example, intothe stubborn surface of the wax. 'Spezia, ' roared the inventor, 'Pezia'lisped the phonograph in tones of ladylike reserve, and so on throughthousands of graded repetitions till the desired results were obtained. 

"The primary education of the phonograph was comical in the extreme. Tohear those grave and reverend signors, rich in scientific honors, patiently reiterating:

 Mary had a little lamb, A little lamb, _lamb_, LAMB, and elaborating that point with anxious gravity, was to receive apractical demonstration of the eternal unfitness of things. "

Milton, when blind, old and poor, showed a royal cheerfulness and never"bated one jot of heart or hope, but steered right onward. "

Dickens' characters seemed to possess him, and haunt him day and nightuntil properly portrayed in his stories. 

At a time when it was considered dangerous to society in Europe for thecommon people to read books and listen to lectures on any but religioussubjects, Charles Knight determined to enlighten the masses by cheapliterature. He believed that a paper could be instructive and not bedull, cheap without being wicked. He started the _Penny Magazine_, whichacquired a circulation of 200, 000 the first year. Knight projected the_Penny Cyclopedia_, the _Library of Entertaining Knowledge_, _Half-HoursWith the Best Authors_, and other useful books at a low price. His wholeadult life was spent in the work of elevating the common people bycheap, yet wholesome, publications. He died in poverty, but gratefulpeople have erected a noble monument over his ashes. 

Demosthenes roused the torpid spirits of his countrymen to a vigorouseffort to preserve their independence against the designs of anambitious and artful prince, and Philip had just reason to say he wasmore afraid of that man than of all the fleets and armies of theAthenians. 

Horace Greeley was a hampered genius who never had a chance to showhimself until he started the _Tribune_, into which he poured his wholeindividuality, life and soul. 

Emerson lost the first years of his life trying to be somebody else. Hefinally came to himself and said: "If a single man plant himselfindomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the whole world will comeround to him in the end. " "Though we travel the world over to find thebeautiful we must carry it with us or we find it not. " "The man thatstands by himself the universe stands by him also. " "Take MichaelAngelo's course, 'to confide in one's self and be something of worth andvalue. '" "None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent orcommanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by himalone. "

Many unknown writers would make fame and fortune if, like Bunyan andMilton and Dickens and George Eliot and Scott and Emerson, they wouldwrite their own lives in their MSS. , if they would write about thingsthey have seen, that they have felt, that they have known. It is lifethoughts that stir and convince, that move and persuade, that carrytheir very iron particles into the blood. The real heaven has never beenoutdone by the ideal. 

Neither poverty nor misfortune could keep Linnæus from his botany. 

The English and Austrian armies called Napoleon theone-hundred-thousand-man. His presence was considered equal to thatforce in battle. 

The lesson he teaches is that which vigor always teaches--that there isalways room for it. To what heaps of cowardly doubts is not that man'slife an answer. 

CHAPTER X. 

TO BE GREAT, CONCENTRATE. 

 Let every one ascertain his special business and calling, and then stick to it. --FRANKLIN. 

 "He who follows two hares is sure to catch neither. "

 None sends his arrow to the mark in view, Whose hand is feeble, or his aim untrue. --COWPER. 

 He who wishes to fulfill his mission must be a man of one idea, that is, of one great overmastering purpose, overshadowing all his aims, and guiding and controlling his entire life. --BATE. 

 The shortest way to do anything is to do only one thing at a time. --CECIL. 

 The power of concentration is one of the most valuable of intellectual attainments. --HORACE MANN. 

 The power of a man increases steadily by continuance in one direction. --EMERSON. 

 Careful attention to one thing often proves superior to genius and art. --CICERO. 

"It puffed like a locomotive, " said a boy of the donkey engine; "itwhistled like the steam-cars, but it didn't go anywhere. "

The world is full of donkey-engines, of people who can whistle and puffand pull, but they don't go anywhere, they have no definite aim, nocontrolling purpose. 

The great secret of Napoleon's power lay in his marvelous ability toconcentrate his forces upon a single point. After finding the weak placein the enemy's ranks he would mass his men and hurl them upon the enemylike an avalanche until he made a breach. What a lesson of the power ofconcentration there is in that man's life! He was such a master ofhimself that he could concentrate his powers upon the smallest detail aswell as upon an empire. 

When Napoleon had anything to say he always went straight to his mark. He had a purpose in everything he did; there was no dilly-dallying norshilly-shallying; he knew what he wanted to say, and said it. It was thesame with all his plans; what he wanted to do, he did. He always hit thebull's eye. His great success in war was due largely to his definitenessof aim. He knew what he wanted to do, and did it. He was like a greatburning glass, concentrating the rays of the sun upon a single spot; heburned a hole wherever he went. 

The sun's rays scattered do no execution, but concentrated in a burningglass, they melt solid granite; yes, a diamond, even. There are plentyof men who have ability enough, the rays of their faculties takenseparately are all right; but they are powerless to collect them, toconcentrate them upon a single object. They lack the burning glass of apurpose, to focalize upon one spot the separate rays of their ability. Versatile men, universal geniuses, are usually weak, because they haveno power to concentrate the rays of their ability, to focalize them uponone point, until they burn a hole in whatever they undertake. 

This power to bring all of one's scattered forces into one focal pointmakes all the difference between success and failure. The sun mightblaze out upon the earth forever without burning a hole in it or settinganything on fire; whereas a very few of these rays concentrated in aburning glass would, as stated, transform a diamond into vapor. 

Sir James Mackintosh was a man of marvelous ability. He excited ineverybody who knew him great expectations, but there was no purpose inhis life to act as a burning glass to collect the brilliant rays of hisintellect, by which he might have dazzled the world. Most men haveability enough, if they could only focalize it into one grand, central, all-absorbing purpose, to accomplish great things. 

"To encourage me in my efforts to cultivate the power of attention, "said a friend of John C. Calhoun, "he stated that to this end he hadearly subjected his mind to such a rigid course of discipline, and hadpersisted without faltering until he had acquired a perfect control overit; that he could now confine it to any subject as long as he pleased, without wandering even for a moment; that it was his uniform habit, when he set out alone to walk or ride, to select a subject forreflection, and that he never suffered his attention to wander from ituntil he was satisfied with its examination. "

"My friend laughs at me because I have but one idea, " said a learnedAmerican chemist; "but I have learned that if I wish ever to make abreach in a wall, I must play my guns continually upon one point. "

"It is his will that has made him what he is, " said an intimate friendof Philip D. Armour, the Chicago millionaire. "He fixes his eye onsomething ahead, and no matter what rises upon the right or the left henever sees it. He goes straight in pursuit of the object ahead, andovertakes it at last. He never gives up what he undertakes. "

While Horace Greeley would devote a column of the New York _Tribune_ toan article, Thurlow Weed would treat the same subject in a few words inthe Albany _Evening Journal_, and put the argument into such shape as tocarry far more conviction. 

"If you would be pungent, " says Southey, "be brief; for it is with wordsas with sunbeams--the more they are condensed the deeper they burn. "

"The only valuable kind of study, " said Sydney Smith, "is to read soheartily that dinner-time comes two hours before you expected it; tosit with your Livy before you and hear the geese cackling that saved theCapitol, and to see with your own eyes the Carthaginian sutlersgathering up the rings of the Roman knights after the battle of Cannæ, and heaping them into bushels, and to be so intimately present at theactions you are reading of, that when anybody knocks at the door it willtake you two or three seconds to determine whether you are in your ownstudy or on the plains of Lombardy, looking at Hannibal's weather-beatenface and admiring the splendor of his single eye. "

"Never study on speculation, " says Waters; "all such study is vain. Forma plan; have an object; then work for it; learn all you can about it, and you will be sure to succeed. What I mean by studying on speculationis that aimless learning of things because they may be useful some day;which is like the conduct of the woman who bought at auction a brassdoor-plate with the name of Thompson on it, thinking it might be usefulsome day!"

"I resolved, when I began to read law, " said Edward Sugden, afterwardLord St. Leonard, "to make everything I acquired perfectly my own, andnever go on to a second reading till I had entirely accomplished thefirst. Many of the competitors read as much in a day as I did in a week;but at the end of twelve months my knowledge was as fresh as on the dayit was acquired, while theirs had glided away from their recollection. "

"Very often, " says Sidney Smith, "the modern precept of education is, 'Be ignorant of nothing. ' But my advice is, have the courage to beignorant of a great number of things, that you may avoid the calamity ofbeing ignorant of all things. "

"Lord, help me to take fewer things into my hands, and to do them well, "is a prayer recommended by Paxton Hood to an overworked man. 

"Many persons seeing me so much engaged in active life, " said EdwardBulwer Lytton, "and as much about the world as if I had never been astudent, have said to me, 'When do you get time to write all your books?How on earth do you contrive to do so much work?' I shall surprise youby the answer I made. The answer is this--I contrive to do so much workby never doing too much at a time. A man to get through work well mustnot overwork himself; or, if he do too much to-day, the reaction offatigue will come, and he will be obliged to do too little to-morrow. Now, since I began really and earnestly to study, which was not till Ihad left college, and was actually in the world, I may perhaps say thatI have gone through as large a course of general reading as most men ofmy time. I have traveled much and I have seen much; I have mixed muchin politics, and in the various business of life; and in addition to allthis, I have published somewhere about sixty volumes, some upon subjectsrequiring much special research. And what time do you think, as ageneral rule, I have devoted to study, to reading, and writing? Not morethan three hours a day; and, when Parliament is sitting, not alwaysthat. But then, during these three hours, I have given my wholeattention to what I was about. "

"The things that are crowded out of a life are the test of that life. Not what we would like, but what we long for and strive for with all ourmight we attain. "

"One great cause of failure of young men in business, " says Carnegie, "is lack of concentration. They are prone to seek outside investments. The cause of many a surprising failure lies in so doing. Every dollar ofcapital and credit, every business-thought, should be concentrated uponthe one business upon which a man has embarked. He should never scatterhis shot. It is a poor business which will not yield better returns forincreased capital than any outside investment. No man or set of men orcorporation can manage a business-man's capital as well as he can manageit himself. The rule, 'Do not put all your eggs in one basket, ' does notapply to a man's life-work. Put all your eggs in one basket and thenwatch that basket, is the true doctrine--the most valuable rule of all. "

"A man must not only desire to be right, " said Beecher, "he must _be_right. You may say, 'I wish to send this ball so as to kill the lioncrouching yonder, ready to spring upon me. My wishes are all right, andI hope Providence will direct the ball. ' Providence won't. You must doit; and if you do not, you are a dead man. "

The ruling idea of Milton's life and the key to his mental history ishis resolve to produce a great poem. Not that the aspiration in itselfis singular, for it is probably shared in by every poet in his turn. Asevery clever schoolboy is destined by himself or his friends to becomeLord-Chancellor, and every private in the French army carries in hishaversack the baton of a marshal, so it is a necessary ingredient of thedream of Parnassus that it should embody itself in a form of surpassingbrilliance. What distinguishes Milton from the crowd of youthfulliterary aspirants, _audax juventa_, is his constancy of resolve. He notonly nourished through manhood the dream of youth, keeping under theimportunate instincts which carry off most ambitions in middle life intothe pursuit of place, profit, honor--the thorns which spring up andsmother the wheat--but carried out his dream in its integrity in oldage. He formed himself for this achievement and no other. Study at home, travel abroad, the arena of political controversy, the public service, the practice of the domestic virtues, were so many parts of theschooling which was to make a poet. 

Bismarck adopted it as the aim of his public life "to snatch Germanyfrom Austrian oppression, " and to gather round Prussia, in a NorthGerman Confederation, all the states whose tone of thought, religion, manners and interest "were in harmony with those of Prussia. " "To attainthis end, " he once said in conversation, "I would brave alldangers--exile, the scaffold itself. What matter if they hang me, provided the rope with which I am hung binds this new Germany firmly tothe Prussian throne?"

It is related of Greeley that, when he was writing his "AmericanConflict, " he found it necessary to conceal himself somewhere, toprevent constant interruptions. He accordingly took a room in the Biblehouse, where he worked from ten in the morning till five in theafternoon, and then appeared in the sanctum, seemingly as fresh as ever. 

Cooper Institute is the evening school which Peter Cooper, as long agoas 1810, resolved to found some day, when he was looking about as anapprentice for a place where he could go to school evenings. Through allhis career in various branches of business he never lost sight of thisobject; and, as his wealth increased, he was pleased that it broughtnearer the realization of his dream. 

"See a great lawyer like Rufus Choate, " says Dr. Storrs, "in a casewhere his convictions are strong and his feelings are enlisted. He sawlong ago, as he glanced over the box, that five of those in it weresympathetic with him; as he went on he became equally certain of seven;the number now has risen to ten; but two are still left whom he feelsthat he has not persuaded or mastered. Upon them he now concentrates hispower, summing up the facts, setting forth anew and more forcibly theprinciples, urging upon them his view of the case with a more and moreintense action of his mind upon theirs, until one only is left. Like theblow of a hammer, continually repeated until the iron bar crumblesbeneath it, his whole force comes with ceaseless percussion on that onemind till it has yielded, and accepts the conviction on which thepleader's purpose is fixed. Men say afterward, 'He surpassed himself. 'It was only because the singleness of his aim gave unity, intensity, andoverpowering energy to the mind. "

"The foreman of the jury, however, " said Whipple, "was a hard-hearted, practical man, a model of business intellect and integrity, but with anincapacity of understanding any intellect or conscience radicallydiffering from his own. Mr. Choate's argument, as far as the facts andthe law were concerned, was through in an hour. Still he went onspeaking. Hour after hour passed, and yet he continued to speak withconstantly increasing eloquence, repeating and recapitulating, withoutany seeming reason, facts which he had already stated and argumentswhich he had already urged. The truth was, as I gradually learned, thathe was engaged in a hand-to-hand--or rather in a brain-to-brain and aheart-to-heart--contest with the foreman, whose resistance he wasdetermined to break down, but who confronted him for three hours withdefiance observable in every rigid line of his honest countenance. 'Youfool!' was the burden of the advocate's ingenious argument. 'Yourascal!' was the phrase legibly printed on the foreman's incredulousface. But at last the features of the foreman began to relax, and at theend the stern lines melted into acquiescence with the opinion of theadvocate, who had been storming at the defences of his mind, his heart, and his conscience for five hours, and had now entered as victor. Theverdict was 'Not guilty. '"

"He who would do some great thing in this short life must apply himselfto the work with such a concentration of his forces as, to idlespectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity. "

It is generally thought that when a man is said to be dissipated in hishabits he must be a drinking man, or a gambler, or licentious, or allthree; but dissipation is of two kinds, coarse and refined. A man candissipate or scatter all of his mental energies and physical power byindulging in too many respectable diversions, as easily as in habits ofa viler nature. Property and its cares make some men dissipated; toomany friends make others. The exactions of "society, " the balls, parties, receptions, and various entertainments constantly being givenand attended by the _beau monde_, constitute a most wasting species ofdissipation. Others, again, fritter away all their time and strength inpolitical agitations, or in controversies and gossip; others in idlingwith music or some other one of the fine arts; others in feasting orfasting, as their dispositions and feelings incline. But the man ofconcentration of purpose is never a dissipated man in any sense, good orbad. He has no time to devote to useless trifling of any kind, but putsin as many strokes of faithful work as possible toward the attainment ofsome definite good. 

CHAPTER XI. 

AT ONCE. 

 Note the sublime precision that leads the earth over a circuit of 500, 000, 000 miles back to the solstice at the appointed moment without the loss of one second--no, not the millionth part of a second--for ages and ages of which it traveled that imperial road. --EDWARD EVERETT. 

 Despatch is the soul of business. --CHESTERFIELD. 

 Unfaithfulness in the keeping of an appointment is an act of clear dishonesty. You may as well borrow a person's money as his time. --HORACE MANN. 

 By the street of by-and-by one arrives at the house of never. --CERVANTES. 

 The greatest thief this world has ever produced is procrastination, and he is still at large. --H. W. SHAW. 

"Oh, how I do appreciate a boy who is always on time!" says H. C. Bowen. "How quickly you learn to depend on him, and how soon you find yourselfintrusting him with weightier matters! The boy who has acquired areputation for punctuality has made the first contribution to thecapital that in after years makes his success a certainty!"

"Nothing commends a young man so much to his employers, " says JohnStuart Blackie, "as accuracy and punctuality in the conduct of hisbusiness. And no wonder. On each man's exactitude depends thecomfortable and easy going of his machine. If the clock goes fitfullynobody knows the time of day; and, if your task is a link in the chainof another man's work, you are his clock, and he ought to be able torely on you. "

"The whole period of youth, " said Ruskin, "is one essentially offormation, edification, instruction. There is not an hour of it but istrembling with destinies--not a moment of which, once passed, theappointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow struck onthe cold iron. "

"To-morrow, didst thou say?" asked Cotton. "Go to--I will not hear ofit. To-morrow! 't is a sharper who stakes his penury against thyplenty--who takes thy ready cash and pays thee naught but wishes, hopesand promises, the currency of idiots. _To-morrow!_ it is a periodnowhere to be found in all the hoary registers of time, unless perchancein the fool's calendar. Wisdom disclaims the word, nor holds societywith those that own it. 'Tis fancy's child, and folly is its father;wrought of such stuffs as dreams are; and baseless as the fantasticvisions of the evening. " Oh, how many a wreck on the road to successcould say: "I have spent all my life in the pursuit of to-morrow, beingassured that to-morrow has some vast benefit or other in store for me. "

"I give it as my deliberate and solemn conviction, " said Dr. Fitch, "that the individual who is tardy in meeting an appointment will neverbe respected or successful in life. "

"If a man has no regard for the time of other men, " said Horace Greeley, "why should he have for their money? What is the difference betweentaking a man's hour and taking his five dollars? There are many men towhom each hour of the business day is worth more than five dollars. "

A man who keeps his time will keep his word; in truth, he cannot keephis word unless he _does_ keep his time. 

When the Duchess of Sutherland came late, keeping the court waiting, thequeen, who was always vexed by tardiness, presented her with her ownwatch, saying, "I am afraid your's does not keep good time. "

"Then you must get a new watch, or I another secretary, " repliedWashington, when his secretary excused the lateness of his attendance bysaying that his watch was too slow. 

"I have generally found that a man who is good at an excuse is good fornothing else, " said Franklin to a servant who was always late, butalways ready with an excuse. 

One of the best things about school and college life is that the bellwhich strikes the hour for rising, for recitations, or for lectures, teaches habits of promptness. Every young man should have a watch whichis a good timekeeper; one that is _nearly_ right encourages bad habits, and is an expensive investment at any price. Wear threadbare clothes ifyou must, but never carry an inaccurate watch. 

"Five minutes behind time" has ruined many a man and many a firm. 

"He who rises late, " says Fuller, "must trot all day, and shall scarcelyovertake his business at night. "

Some people are too late for everything but ruin; when a noblemanapologized to George III. For being late, and said, "better late thannever, " the king replied, "No, I say, _better never than late_. "

"Better late than never" is not half so good a maxim as "Better neverlate. "

If Samuel Budgett was even a minute late at an appointment he wouldapologize; he was as punctual as a chronometer. Punctuality iscontagious. Napoleon infused promptness into his officers every minute. What power there is in promptness to take the drudgery out of adisagreeable task. 

"A singular mischance has happened to some of our friends, " saidHamilton. "At the instant when He ushered them into existence, God gavethem work to do, and He also gave them a competency of time; so muchthat if they began at the right moment and wrought with sufficientvigor, their time and their work would end together. But a good manyyears ago a strange misfortune befell them. A fragment of their allottedtime was lost. They cannot tell what became of it, but sure enough, ithas dropped out of existence; for just like two measuring lines laidalongside the one an inch shorter than the other, their work and theirtime run parallel, but the work is always ten minutes in advance of thetime. They are not irregular. They are never too soon. Their letters areposted the very minute after the mail is closed. They arrive at thewharf just in time to see the steamboat off, they come in sight of theterminus precisely as the station gates are closing. They do not breakany engagement nor neglect any duty; but they systematically go about ittoo late, and usually too late by about the same fatal interval. "

Of Tours, the wealthy New Orleans ship-owner, it is said that he was asmethodical and regular as a clock, and that his neighbors were in thehabit of judging of the time of the day by his movements. 

"How, " asked a man of Sir Walter Raleigh, "do you accomplish so much andin so short a time?" "When I have anything do, I go and do it, " was thereply. The man who always acts promptly, even if he makes occasionalmistakes, will succeed when a procrastinator will fail--even if he havethe better judgment. 

When asked how he got through so much work, Lord Chesterfield replied:"Because I never put off till morrow what I can do to-day. "

Dewitt, pensionary of Holland, answered the same question: "Nothing ismore easy; never do but one thing at a time, and never put off untilto-morrow what can be done to-day. "

Walter Scott was a very punctual man. This was the secret of hisenormous achievements. He made it a rule to answer all letters the daythey were received. He rose at five. By breakfast time he had broken theneck of the day's work, as he used to say. Writing to a youth who hadobtained a situation and asked him for advice, he gave this counsel:"Beware of stumbling over a propensity which easily besets you from nothaving your time fully employed--I mean what the women call dawdling. Doinstantly whatever is to be done, and take the hours of recreation afterbusiness, never before it. "

Frederick the Great had a maxim: "Time is the only treasure of which itis proper to be avaricious. "

Leibnitz declared that "the loss of an hour is the loss of a part oflife. "

Napoleon, who knew the value of time, remarked that it was the quarterhours that won battles. The value of minutes has been often recognized, and any person watching a railway clerk handing out tickets and changeduring the last few minutes available must have been struck with howmuch could be done in these short periods of time. 

At the appointed hour the train starts and by and by is carryingpassengers at the rate of sixty miles an hour. In a second you arecarried twenty-nine yards. In one twenty-ninth of a second you pass overone yard. Now, one yard is quite an appreciable distance, but onetwenty-ninth of a second is a period which cannot be appreciated. 

The father of the Webster brothers, before going away to be gone for aweek, gave his boys a stint to cut a field of corn, telling them thatafter it was done, if they had any time left, they might do what theypleased. The boys looked the field over on Monday morning and concludedthey could do all the work in three days, so they decided to play thefirst three days. Thursday morning they went to the field, but it lookedso much larger than it did on Monday morning, that they decided theycould not possibly do it in three days, and rather than not do it all, they would not touch it. When the angry father returned, he calledEzekiel to him and asked him why they had not harvested the corn. "Whathave you been doing?" said the stern father. "Nothing, father. " "Andwhat have you been doing, Daniel?" "Helping Zeke, sir. "

How many boys, and men, too, waste hours and days "helping Zeke!"

"Remember the world was created in six days, " said Napoleon to one ofhis officers. "Ask for whatever you please except time. "

Railroads and steamboats have been wonderful educators in promptness. Nomatter who is late they leave right on the minute. 

It is interesting to watch people at a great railroad station, running, hurrying, trying to make up time, for they well know when the timearrives the train will leave. 

Factories, shops, stores, banks, everything opens and closes on theminute. The higher the state of civilization the prompter is everythingdone. In countries without railroads, as in Eastern countries, everything is behind time. Everybody is indolent and lazy. 

The world knows that the prompt man's bills and notes will be paid onthe day they are due, and will trust him. People will give him credit, for they know they can depend upon him. But lack of promptness willshake confidence almost as quickly as downright dishonesty. The man whohas a habit of dawdling or listlessness will show it in everything hedoes. He is late at meals, late at work, dawdles on the street, loseshis train, misses his appointments, and dawdles at his store until thebanks are closed. Everybody he meets suffers more or less from hismalady, for dawdling becomes practically a disease. 

"You will never find time for anything, " said Charles Buxton; "if youwant time you must make it. "

The best work we ever do is that which we do now, and can never repeat. "Too late, " is the curse of the unsuccessful, who forget that "oneto-day is worth two to-morrows. "

Time accepts no sacrifice; it admits of neither redemption noratonement. _It is the true avenger. _ Your enemy may become yourfriend, --your injurer may do you justice, --but Time is inexorable, andhas no mercy. 

 Then stay the present instant, dear Horatio: Imprint the marks of wisdom on its wings. 'Tis of more worth than kingdoms! far more precious Than all the crimson treasures of life's fountain. O! let it not elude thy grasp; but, like The good old patriarch upon record, Hold the fleet angel fast until he bless thee. --NATHANIEL COTTON. 

CHAPTER XII. 

THOROUGHNESS. 

 Doing well depends upon doing completely. --PERSIAN PROVERB. 

 He who does well will always have patrons enough. --PLAUTUS. 

 If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door. --EMERSON. 

 I hate a thing done by halves. If it be right, do it boldly; if it be wrong, leave it undone. --GILPIN. 

 No two things differ more than Hurry and Dispatch. Hurry is the mark of a weak mind, Dispatch of a strong one. * * * Like a turnstile, he (the weak man) is in everybody's way, but stops nobody; he talks a great deal, but says very little; looks into everything, but sees nothing; and has a hundred irons in the fire, but very few of them are hot, and with those few that are he only burns his fingers. --COLTON. 

"Make me as good a hammer as you know how, " said a carpenter to theblacksmith in a New York village before the first railroad was built;"six of us have come to work on the new church, and I've left mine athome. " "As good a one as I know how?" asked David Maydole, doubtfully, "but perhaps you don't want to pay for as good a one as I know how tomake. " "Yes, I do, " said the carpenter, "I want a good hammer. "

It was indeed a good hammer that he received, the best, probably, thathad ever been made. By means of a longer hole than usual, David hadwedged the handle in its place so that the head could not fly off, awonderful improvement in the eyes of the carpenter, who boasted of hisprize to his companions. They all came to the shop next day, and eachordered just such a hammer. When the contractor saw the tools, heordered two for himself, asking that they be made a little better thanthose for his men. "I can't make any better ones, " said Maydole; "when Imake a thing, I make it as well as I can, no matter whom it is for. "

The storekeeper soon ordered two dozen, a supply unheard of in hisprevious business career. A New York dealer in tools came to the villageto sell his wares, and bought all the storekeeper had, and left astanding order for all the blacksmith could make. David might have grownvery wealthy by making goods of the standard already attained; butthroughout his long and successful life he never ceased to study stillfurther to perfect his hammers in the minutest detail. They were usuallysold without any warrant of excellence, the word "Maydole" stamped onthe head being universally considered a guaranty of the best article theworld could produce. Character is power, and is the best advertisementin the world. 

"Yes, " said he one day to the late James Parton, who told this story, "Ihave made hammers in this little village for twenty-eight years. ""Well, " replied the great historian, "by this time you ought to make apretty good hammer. "

"No, I can't, " was the reply, "I can't make a pretty good hammer. I makethe best hammer that's made. My only care is to make a perfect hammer. If folks don't want to pay me what they're worth, they're welcome to buycheaper ones somewhere else. My wants are few, and I'm ready any time togo back to my blacksmith's shop, where I worked forty years ago, beforeI thought of making hammers. Then I had a boy to blow by bellows, now Ihave one hundred and fifteen men. Do you see them over there watchingthe heads cook over the charcoal furnace, as your cook, if she knowswhat she is about, watches the chops broiling? Each of them is hammeredout of a piece of iron, and is tempered under the inspection of anexperienced man. Every handle is seasoned three years, or until there isno shrink left in it. Once I thought I could use machinery inmanufacturing them; now I know that a perfect tool can't be made bymachinery, and every bit of the work is done by hand. "

"In telling this little story, " said Parton, "I have told thousands ofstories. Take the word 'hammer' out of it, and put 'glue' in its place, and you have the history of Peter Cooper. By putting in other words, youcan make the true history of every great business in the world which haslasted thirty years. "

"We have no secret, " said Manager Daniel J. Morrill, of the Cambria IronWorks, employing seven thousand men, at Johnstown, Pa. "We always try tobeat our last batch of rails. That is all the secret we've got, and wedon't care who knows it. "

"I don't try to see how cheap a machine I can produce, but how good amachine, " said the late John C. Whitin, of Northbridge, Mass. , to acustomer who complained of the high price of some cotton machinery. Business men soon learned what this meant; and when there was occasionto advertise any machinery for sale, New England cotton manufacturerswere accustomed to state the number of years it had been in use and add, as an all-sufficient guaranty of Northbridge products, "Whitin make. "Put thoroughness into your work: it pays. 

"The accurate boy is always the favored one, " said President Tuttle. Ifa carpenter must stand at his journeyman's elbow to be sure his work isright, or if a cashier must run over his bookkeeper's columns, he mightas well do the work himself as employ another to do it in that way. 

"Mr. Girard, can you not assist me by giving me a little work?" askedone John Smith, who had formerly worked for the great banker andattracted attention by his activity. 

"Assistance--work--ah? You want work?" "Yes sir; it's a long time sinceI've had anything to do. "

"Very well, I shall give you some. You see dem stone yondare?" "Yes, sir. " "Very well; you shall fetch and put them in this place; you see?""Yes sir. " "And when you done, come to me at my bank. "

Smith finished his task, reported to Mr. Girard, and asked for morework. "Ah, ha, oui. You want more work? Very well; you shall go placedem stone where you got him. Understandez? You take him back. " "Yes, sir. "

Again Smith performed the work and waited on Mr. Girard for payment. "Ah, ha, you all finish?" "Yes, sir. " "Very well; how much money shall Igive you?" "One dollar, sir. " "Dat is honest. You take no advantage. Dare is your dollar. " "Can I do anything else for you?" "Oui, come herewhen you get up to-morrow. You shall have more work. "

Smith was punctual, but for the third time, and yet again for thefourth, he was ordered to "take dem stone back again. " When he calledfor his pay in the evening Stephen Girard spoke very cordially. "Ah, Monsieur Smit, you shall be my man; you mind your own business and doit, ask no questions, you do not interfere. You got one vife?" "Yes, sir. " "Ah, dat is bad. Von vife is bad. Any little chicks?" "Yes, sir, five living. "

"Five? Dat is good; I like five. I like you, Monsieur Smit; you like towork; you mind your business. Now I do something for your five littlechicks. There: take these five pieces of paper for your five littlechicks; you shall work for them; you shall mind your own business, andyour little chicks shall never want five more. " In a few years Mr. Smithbecame one of the wealthiest and most respected merchants ofPhiladelphia. 

It is difficult to estimate the great influence upon a life of the earlyformed habit of doing everything to a finish, not leaving it half done, or pretty nearly done, but completely done. Nature finishes every littleleaf, even to every little rib, its edges and stem, as exactly andperfectly as though it were the only leaf to be made that year. Even theflower that blooms in the mountain dell, where no human eye will everbehold it, is finished with the same perfection and exactness of formand outline, with the same delicate shade of color, with the samecompleteness of beauty, as though it was made for royalty in the queen'sgarden. "Perfection to the finish" is a motto which every youth shouldadopt. 

"How did you attain such excellence in your profession?" was asked ofSir Joshua Reynolds. "By observing one simple rule, namely, to make eachpicture the best, " he replied. 

The discipline of being exact is uplifting. Progress is never more rapidthan it is when we are studying to be accurate. The effort educates allthe powers. Arthur Helps says: "I do not know that there is anythingexcept it be humility, which is so valuable, as an incident ofeducation, as accuracy: and accuracy can be taught. Direct lies told tothe world are as dust in the balance when weighed against the falsehoodsof inaccuracy. "

Too many youths enter upon their business in a languid, half-heartedway, and do their work in a slipshod manner. The consequence is thatthey inspire neither admiration nor confidence on the part of theirsuperiors, and cut off almost every chance of success. There is a loose, perfunctory method of doing one's work that never merits advance, andvery rarely wins it. Instead of buckling to their task with all theforce they possess, they merely touch it with the tips of their fingers, their rule apparently being, the maximum of ease with the minimum ofwork. The principle of Strafford, the great minister of Charles I. , isindicated by his motto, the one word "Thorough. " It was said of KingHezekiah, "In every work that he began, he did it with all his heart andprospered. "

The stone-cutter goes to work on a stone and most patiently shapes it. He carves that bit of fern, putting all his skill and taste into it. Andby-and-by the master says, "Well done, " and takes it away and gives himanother block and tells him to work on that. And so he works on thatfrom the rising of the sun till the going down of the same, and he onlyknows that he is earning his bread. And he continues to put all hisskill and taste into his work. He has no idea what use will be made ofthese few stones which he has been carving, until afterward, when, oneday, walking along the street, and looking up at the front of the ArtGallery, he sees the stones upon which he has worked. He did not knowwhat they were for, but the architect did. And as he stands looking athis work on that structure which is the beauty of the whole street, hesays: "I am glad I did it well. " And every day as he passes that way, hesays to himself exultingly, "I did it well. " He did not draw the design, nor plan the building, and he knew nothing of what use was to be made ofhis work: but he took pains in cutting those stems; and when he sawthey were a part of that magnificent structure, his soul rejoiced. 

Work that is not finished, is not work at all; it is merely a botch. Weoften see this defect of incompleteness in a child, which increases inyouth. All about the house, everywhere, there are half-finished things. It is true that children often become tired of things which they beginwith enthusiasm; but there is a great difference in children aboutfinishing what they undertake. A boy, for instance, will start out inthe morning with great enthusiasm to dig his garden over; but, after afew minutes, his enthusiasm has evaporated, and he wants to go fishing. He soon becomes tired of this, and thinks he will make a boat. No soonerdoes he get a saw and knife and a few pieces of board about him than hemakes up his mind that really what he wanted to do, after all, was toplay ball, and this, in turn, must give way to something else. 

One watch, set right, will do to set many by; but, on the other hand, one that goes wrong may be the means of misleading a whole neighborhood. The same may be said of the example we individually set to those aroundus. 

"Whatever I have tried to do in life, " said Dickens, "I have tried withall my heart to do well. What I have devoted myself to, I have devotedmyself to completely. "

It is no disgrace to be a shoemaker, but it is a disgrace for ashoemaker to make bad shoes. 

A traveler, recently returned from Jerusalem, found, in conversationwith Humboldt, that the latter was as conversant with the streets andhouses of Jerusalem as he was himself. On being asked how long it wassince he had visited it, the aged philosopher replied: "I have neverbeen there; but I expected to go sixty years since, and I preparedmyself. "

So noted for excellency was everything bearing the brand of GeorgeWashington, that a barrel of flour marked "George Washington, MountVernon, " was exempted from the customary inspection in the West Indiaports. 

Pascal, the most wonderful mathematical genius of his time, whose workon conic sections, at sixteen, Descartes refused to believe could beproduced at that age, is considered to have fixed the French language, as Luther did the German, by his writings. None of his provincialletters, with the exception of the last three, was more than eightquarto pages in length, yet he devoted twenty days to the writing of asingle letter, and one of them was written no less than thirteen times. 

The night the Tasmania was wrecked, the captain had given the coursenorth by west, sixty-seven degrees. He had taken account of eddies andcurrents. The second officer, overlooking these, ordered the helmsmanto make it north by west, fifty-seven degrees, but to bring the shiparound so gently that the captain wouldn't know it. Hence herdestruction. 

Rev. Mr. Maley, of the Ohio Conference of the Methodist Church, had thehabit of greatly exaggerating anything he talked about. His brethren atconference told him that this habit was growing on him, and renderinghim unpopular in the ministry. Mr. Maley heard them patiently, and thensaid: "Brethren, I am aware of the truth of all you have said, and haveshed barrels of tears over it. "

There is a great difference between going just right and a littlewrong. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

TRIFLES. 

 In the elder days of Art Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part, For the gods see everywhere. --LONGFELLOW. 

 Think naught a trifle, though it small appear, Small sands the mountain, moments make the year, And trifles, life. --YOUNG. 

 The smallest hair throws its shadow. --GOETHE. 

 He that despiseth small things shall fall little by little. --ECCLESIASTES. 

 It is the little rift within the lute, That by and by will make the music mute, And ever widening slowly silence all. --TENNYSON. 

 "A pebble in the streamlet scant Has turned the course of many a river: A dewdrop on the baby plant Has warped the giant oak forever. "

 It is the close observation of little things which is the secret of success in business, in art, in science, and in every pursuit of life. --SMILES. 

 "Only!--But then the onlys Make up the mighty all. "

"My rule of conduct has been that whatever is worth doing at all isworth doing well, " said Nicolas Poussin, the great French painter. Whenasked the reason why he had become so eminent in a land of famousartists he replied, "Because I have neglected nothing. "

"Do little things now, " says a Persian proverb; "so shall big thingscome to thee by and by asking to be done. " God will take care of thegreat things if we do not neglect the little ones. 

A gentleman advertised for a boy to assist him in his office, and nearlyfifty applicants presented themselves to him. Out of the whole number hein a short time selected one and dismissed the rest. "I should like toknow, " said a friend, "on what ground you selected that boy, who had nota single recommendation?" "You are mistaken, " said the gentleman, "hehad a great many. He wiped his feet when he came in, and closed the doorafter him, showing that he was careful. He gave up his seat instantly tothat lame old man, showing that he was kind and thoughtful. He took offhis cap when he came in, and answered my questions promptly andrespectfully, showing that he was polite and gentlemanly. He picked upthe book which I had purposely laid upon the floor, and replaced it onthe table, while all the rest stepped over it, or shoved it aside; andhe waited quietly for his turn, instead of pushing and crowding, showingthat he was honest and orderly. When I talked to him, I noticed thathis clothes were carefully brushed, his hair in nice order, and histeeth as white as milk; and when he wrote his name, I noticed that hisfinger-nails were clean, instead of being tipped with jet, like thathandsome little fellow's, in the blue jacket. Don't you call thoseletters of recommendation? I do; and I would give more for what I cantell about a boy by using my eyes ten minutes, than for all the fineletters he can bring me. "

"Least of all seeds, greatest of all harvests, " seems to be one of thegreat laws of nature. All life comes from microscopic beginnings. Innature there is nothing small. The microscope reveals as great a worldbelow as the telescope above. All of nature's laws govern the smallestatoms, and a single drop of water is a miniature ocean. 

"I cannot see that you have made any progress since my last visit, " saida gentleman to Michael Angelo. "But, " said the sculptor, "I haveretouched this part, polished that, softened that feature, brought outthat muscle, given some expression to this lip, more energy to thatlimb, etc. " "But they are trifles!" exclaimed the visitor. "It may beso, " replied the great artist, "but trifles make perfection, andperfection is no trifle. " That infinite patience which made MichaelAngelo spend a week in bringing out a muscle in a statue with morevital fidelity to truth, or Gerhard Dow a day in giving the right effectto a dewdrop on a cabbage leaf, makes all the difference between successand failure. 

"Of what use is it?" people asked with a sneer, when Franklin told ofhis discovery that lightning and electricity are identical. "What is theuse of a child?" replied Franklin; "it may become a man. "

In the earliest days of cotton spinning, the small fibres would stick tothe bobbins, and make it necessary to stop and clear the machinery. Although this loss of time reduced the earnings of the operatives, thefather of Robert Peel noticed that one of his spinners always drew fullpay, as his machine never stopped. "How is this, Dick?" asked Mr. Peelone day; "the on-looker tells me your bobbins are always clean. " "Ay, that they be, " replied Dick Ferguson. "How do you manage it, Dick?""Why, you see, Meester Peel, " said the workman, "it is sort o' secret!If I tow'd ye, yo'd be as wise as I am. " "That's so, " said Mr. Peel, smiling; "but I'd give you something to know. Could you make all thelooms work as smoothly as yours?" "Ivery one of 'em, meester, " repliedDick. "Well, what shall I give you for your secret?" asked Mr. Peel, andDick replied, "Gi' me a quart of ale every day as I'm in the mills, andI'll tell thee all about it. " "Agreed, " said Mr. Peel, and Dickwhispered very cautiously in his ear, "Chalk your bobbins!" That was thewhole secret, and Mr. Peel soon shot ahead of all his competitors, forhe made machines that would chalk their own bobbins. Dick was handsomelyrewarded with money instead of beer. His little idea has saved the worldmillions of dollars. 

The totality of a life at any moment is the product mainly of littlethings. Trifling choices, insignificant exercises of the will, unimportant acts often repeated, --things seemingly of smallaccount, --these are the thousand tiny sculptors that are carving awayconstantly at the rude block of our life, giving it shape and feature. Indeed the formation of character is much like the work of an artist instone. The sculptor takes a rough, unshapen mass of marble, and withstrong, rapid strokes of mallet and chisel quickly brings into view therude outline of his design; but after the outline appears then comehours, days, perhaps even years, of patient, minute labor. A novicemight see no change in the statue from one day to another; for thoughthe chisel touches the stone a thousand times, it touches as lightly asthe fall of a rain-drop, but each touch leaves a mark. 

The smallest thing becomes respectable when regarded as the commencementof what has advanced or is advancing into magnificence. The crudesettlement of Romulus would have remained an insignificant circumstanceand might have justly sunk into oblivion, if Rome had not at lengthcommanded the world. 

Beecher says that men, in their property, are afraid of conflagrationsand lightning strokes; but if they were building a wharf in Panama, amillion madrepores, so small that only the microscope could detect them, would begin to bore the piles down under the water. There would beneither noise nor foam; but in a little while, if a child did but touchthe post, over it would fall as if a saw had cut it through. 

Men think, with regard to their conduct, that, if they were to liftthemselves up gigantically and commit some crashing sin, they shouldnever be able to hold up their heads; but they will harbor in theirsouls little sins, which are piercing and eating them away to inevitableruin. 

Lichens, of themselves of little value, prepare the way for importantvegetation. They deposit, in dying, an acid which wears away the rockand prepares the mould necessary for the nourishment of superior plants. 

It was but a tiny rivulet trickling down the embankment that started theterrible Johnstown flood and swept thousands into eternity. One nobleheroic act has elevated a nation. Franklin's whole career was changedby a torn copy of Cotton Mather's Essays to Do Good. Taking up a stoneto throw at a turtle was the turning point in Theodore Parker's life. Ashe raised the stone something within him said, "Don't do it, " and hedidn't. He went home and asked his mother what it was in him that said"don't. " She told him it was conscience. Small things become great whena great soul sees them. A child, when asked why a certain tree grewcrooked, answered, "Somebody trod upon it when it was a little fellow. "

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation. A little boyin Holland saw water trickling from a small hole near the bottom of adike. He realized that the leak would rapidly become larger if the waterwas not checked, so he held his hand over the hole for hours on a darkand dismal night until he could attract the attention of passers-by. Hisname is still held in grateful remembrance in Holland. 

We may tell which way the wind blew before the Deluge by marking theripple and cupping of the rain in the petrified sand now preservedforever. We tell the very path by which gigantic creatures, whom mannever saw, walked to the river's edge to find their food. 

The tears of Virgilia and Volumnia saved Rome from the Volscians whennothing else could move the vengeful heart of Coriolanus. 

Not even Helen of Troy, it is said, was beautiful enough to spare thetip of her nose; and if Cleopatra's had been an inch shorter Mark Antonywould never have become infatuated with her wonderful charms, and theblemish would have changed the history of the world. Anne Boleyn'sfascinating smile split the great Church of Rome in twain, and gave anation an altered destiny. Napoleon, who feared not to attack theproudest monarchs in their capitals, shrank from the political influenceof one independent woman in private life, Madame de Staël. 

It was a little thing for a cow to kick over a lantern left in a shanty, but it laid Chicago in ashes, and rendered homeless a hundred thousandpeople. 

The discovery of glass was due to a mere accident--the building of afire on the sand; and the bayonet, first made at Bayonne, in France, owes its existence to the fact that a Basque regiment, being hardpressed by the enemy, one of the soldiers suggested that, as theirammunition was exhausted, they should fix their long knives into thebarrels of their muskets, which was done, and the first bayonet-chargewas made. 

A jest led to a war between two great nations. The presence of a commain a deed, lost to the owner of an estate five thousand dollars a monthfor eight months. The battle of Corunna was fought and Sir John Moore'slife sacrificed, in 1809, through a dragoon stopping to drink whilebearing despatches. 

"You do no work, " said the scissors to the rivet. "Where would your workbe, " said the rivet to the scissors, "if I didn't keep you together?"

Every day is a little life; and our whole life but a day repeated. Thosethat dare lose a day are dangerously prodigal; those that dare misspendit, desperate. What is the happiness of your life made up of? Littlecourtesies, little kindnesses, pleasant words, genial smiles, a friendlyletter, good wishes, and good deeds. One in a million--once in alifetime--may do a heroic action. 

We call the large majority of human lives _obscure_. Presumptuous thatwe are! How know we what lives a single thought retained from the dustof nameless graves may have lighted to renown?

CHAPTER XIV. 

COURAGE. 

 Quit yourselves like men. --1 SAMUEL iv. 9. 

 Cowards have no luck. --ELIZABETH KULMAN. 

 He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear. --EMERSON. 

 To dare is better than to doubt, For doubt is always grieving; 'Tis faith that finds the riddles out; The prize is for believing. --HENRY BURTON. 

 --Walk Boldly and wisely in that light thou hast; There is a hand above will help thee on. --BAILEY'S FESTUS. 

 "Have hope! Though clouds environ now, And gladness hides her face in scorn, Put thou the shadow from thy brow-- No night but hath its morn. "

"Our enemies are before us, " exclaimed the Spartans at Thermopylæ. "Andwe are before them, " was the cool reply of Leonidas. "Deliver yourarms, " came the message from Xerxes. "Come and take them, " was theanswer Leonidas sent back. A Persian soldier said: "You will not be ableto see the sun for flying javelins and arrows. " "Then we will fight inthe shade, " replied a Lacedemonian. What wonder that a handful of suchmen checked the march of the greatest host that ever trod the earth. 

"The hero, " says Emerson, "is the man who is immovably centred. "

Darius the Great sent ambassadors to the Athenians, to demand earth andwater, which denoted submission. The Athenians threw them into a ditchand told them, there was earth and water enough. 

"Bring back the colors, " shouted a captain at the battle of the Alma, when an ensign maintained his ground in front, although the men wereretreating. "No, " cried the ensign, "bring up the men to the colors. ""To dare, and again to dare, and without end to dare, " was Danton'snoble defiance to the enemies of France. 

Shakespeare says: "He is not worthy of the honeycomb that shuns thehives because the bees have stings. "

"It is a bad omen, " said Eric the Red, when his horse slipped and fellon the way to his ship, moored on the coast of Greenland, in readinessfor a voyage of discovery. "Ill-fortune would be mine should I dareventure now upon the sea. " So he returned to his house; but his youngson Leif decided to go, and with a crew of thirty-five men, sailedsouthward in search of the unknown shore upon which Captain Biarni hadbeen driven by a storm, while sailing in another Viking ship two orthree years before. The first land that they saw was probably Labrador, a barren, rugged plain. Leif called this country Heluland, or the landof flat stones. Sailing onward many days, he came to a low, level coastthickly covered with woods, on account of which he called the countryMarkland, probably the modern Nova Scotia. Sailing onward, they came toan island which they named Vinland, on account of the abundance ofdelicious wild grapes in the woods. This was in the year 1000. Herewhere the city of Newport, R. I. , stands, they spent many months, andthen returned to Greenland with their vessel loaded with grapes andstrange kinds of wood. The voyage was successful, and no doubt Eric wassorry he had been frightened by the bad omen. 

"Not every vessel that sails from Tarshish will bring back the Gold ofOphir. But shall it therefore rot in the harbor? No! Give its sails tothe wind!"

Men who have dared have moved the world, often before reaching the primeof life. It is astonishing what daring to begin and perseverance haveenabled even youths to achieve. Alexander, who ascended the throne attwenty, had conquered the whole known world before dying atthirty-three. Julius Cæsar captured eight hundred cities, conqueredthree hundred nations, and defeated three million men, became a greatorator and one of the greatest statesmen known, and still was a youngman. Washington was appointed adjutant-general at nineteen, was sent attwenty-one as an ambassador to treat with the French, and won his firstbattle as a colonel at twenty-two. Lafayette was made general of thewhole French army at twenty. Charlemagne was master of France andGermany at thirty. Condé was only twenty-two when he conquered atRocroi. Galileo was but eighteen when he saw the principle of thependulum in the swinging lamp in the cathedral at Pisa. Peel was inParliament at twenty-one. Gladstone was in Parliament before he wastwenty-two, and at twenty-four he was a Lord of the Treasury. ElizabethBarrett Browning was proficient in Greek and Latin at twelve; De Quinceyat eleven. Robert Browning wrote at eleven poetry of no mean order. Cowley, who sleeps in Westminster Abbey, published a volume of poems atfifteen. N. P. Willis won lasting fame as a poet before leaving college. Macaulay was a celebrated author before he was twenty-three. Luther wasbut twenty-nine when he nailed his famous thesis to the door of thebishop and defied the pope. Nelson was a lieutenant in the British navybefore he was twenty. He was but forty-seven when he received his deathwound at Trafalgar. Charles the Twelfth was only nineteen when he gainedthe battle of Narva; at thirty-six Cortes was the conqueror of Mexico;at thirty-two Clive had established the British power in India. Hannibal, the greatest of military commanders, was only thirty when, atCannæ, he dealt an almost annihilating blow at the Republic of Rome; andNapoleon was only twenty-seven when, on the plains of Italy, heout-generaled and defeated, one after another, the veteran marshals ofAustria. 

Equal courage and resolution are often shown by men who have passed theallotted limit of life. Victor Hugo and Wellington were both in theirprime after they had reached the age of threescore years and ten. GeorgeBancroft wrote some of his best historical work when he was eighty-five. Gladstone ruled England with a strong hand at eighty-four, and was amarvel of literary and scholarly ability. 

"Your Grace has not the organ of animal courage largely developed, " saida phrenologist, who was examining Wellington's head. "You are right, "replied the Iron Duke, "and but for my sense of duty I should haveretreated in my first fight. " That first fight, on an Indian field, wasone of the most terrible on record. 

Grant never knew when he was beaten. When told that he was surrounded bythe enemy at Belmont, he quietly replied: "Well, then, we must cut ourway out. "

When General Jackson was a judge and was holding court in a smallsettlement, a border ruffian, a murderer and desperado, came into thecourt-room with brutal violence and interrupted the court. The judgeordered him to be arrested. The officer did not dare approach him. "Calla posse, " said the judge, "and arrest him. " But they also shrank withfear from the ruffian. "Call me, then, " said Jackson; "this court isadjourned for five minutes. " He left the bench, walked straight up tothe man, and with his eagle eye actually cowed the ruffian, who droppedhis weapons, afterward saying: "There was something in his eye I couldnot resist. "

Lincoln never shrank from espousing an unpopular cause when he believedit to be right. At the time when it almost cost a young lawyer his breadand butter to defend the fugitive slave, and when other lawyers hadrefused, Lincoln would always plead the cause of the unfortunatewhenever an opportunity presented. "Go to Lincoln, " people would say, when these bounded fugitives were seeking protection; "he's not afraidof any cause, if it's right. "

Abraham Lincoln's boyhood was one long struggle with poverty, withlittle education and no influential friends. When at last he had begunthe practice of law it required no little daring to cast his fortunewith the weaker side in politics, and thus imperil what small reputationhe had gained. Only the most sublime moral courage could have sustainedhim as President to hold his ground against hostile criticism and a longtrain of disaster; to issue the Emancipation Proclamation; to supportGrant and Stanton against the clamor of the politicians and the press;and through it all to do the right as God gave him to see the right. 

"Doubt indulged becomes doubt realized. " To determine to do anything ishalf the battle. "To think a thing is impossible is to make it so. ""Courage is victory, timidity is defeat. "

Don't waste time dreaming of obstacles you may never encounter, or incrossing bridges you have not reached. Don't fool with a nettle! Graspwith firmness if you would rob it of its sting. To half will and to hangforever in the balance is to lose your grip on life. 

Execute your resolutions immediately. Thoughts are but dreams till theireffects be tried. Does competition trouble you? work away; what is yourcompetitor but a man? _Conquer your place in the world_, for all thingsserve a brave soul. Combat difficulty manfully; sustain misfortunebravely; endure poverty nobly; encounter disappointment courageously. The influence of the brave man is a magnetism which creates an epidemicof noble zeal in all about him. Every day sends to the grave obscuremen, who have only remained in obscurity because their timidity hasprevented them from making a first effort; and who, if they could havebeen induced to begin, would in all probability have gone great lengthsin the career of usefulness and fame. "No great deed is done, " saysGeorge Eliot, "by falterers who ask for certainty. "

A mouse that dwelt near the abode of a great magician was kept in suchconstant distress by its fear of a cat that the magician, taking pity onit, turned it into a cat itself. Immediately it began to suffer from itsfear of a dog, so the magician turned it into a dog. Then it began tosuffer from fear of a tiger, and the magician turned it into a tiger. Then it began to suffer from its fear of huntsmen, and the magician, indisgust, said, "Be a mouse again. As you have only the heart of a mouseit is impossible to help you by giving you the body of a nobler animal. "And the poor creature again became a mouse. 

Young Commodore Oliver H. Perry, not twenty-eight years old, wasintrusted with the plan to gain control of Lake Erie. With great energyPerry directed the construction of nine ships, carrying fifty-four guns, and conquered Commodore Barclay, a veteran of European navies, with sixvessels, carrying sixty-three guns. Perry had no experience in navalbattles before this. 

To believe a business impossible is the way to make it so. Feasibleprojects often miscarry through despondency, and are strangled at birthby a cowardly imagination. A ship on a lee shore stands out to sea toescape shipwreck. Shrink and you will be despised. 

One of Napoleon's drummer boys won the battle of Arcola. Napoleon'slittle army of fourteen thousand men had fought fifty thousand Austriansfor seventy-two hours; the Austrians' position enabled them to sweep thebridge of Arcola, which the French had gained and which they must holdto win the battle. The drummer boy, on the shoulders of his sergeant(who swam across the river with him), beat the drum all the way acrossthe river, and when on the opposite end of the bridge he beat his drumso vigorously that the Austrians, remembering the terrible Frenchonslaught of the day before, fled in terror, thinking the French armywas advancing upon them. Napoleon dated his great confidence in himselffrom this drum. This boy's heroic act was represented in stone on thefront of the Pantheon of Paris. 

Two days before the battle of Jena Napoleon said: "My lads, you must notfear death: when soldiers brave death they drive him into the enemy'sranks. "

Arago says, in his autobiography, that when he was puzzled anddiscouraged with difficulties he met with in his early studies inmathematics some words he found on the waste leaf of his text-bookcaught his attention and interested him. He found it to be a shortletter from D'Alembert to a young person, disheartened like himself, andread: "Go on, sir, go on. The difficulties you meet with will resolvethemselves as you advance. Proceed and light will dawn and shine withincreasing clearness on your path. " "That maxim, " he said, "was mygreatest master in mathematics. "

Overtaken near a rocky coast by a sudden storm of great violence, thecaptain of a French brig gave orders to put out to sea; but in spite ofall the efforts of the crew they could not steer clear of the rocks, andalter struggling for a whole day they felt a violent shock, accompaniedby a horrible crash. The boats were lowered, but only to be swept awayby the waves. As a last resort the captain proposed that some sailorsshould swim ashore with a rope, but not a man would volunteer. 

"Captain, " said the little twelve-year-old cabin boy, Jacques, timidly, "You don't wish to expose the lives of good sailors like these; it doesnot matter what becomes of a little cabin boy. Give me a ball of strongstring, which will unroll as I go on; fasten one end around my body, andI promise you that within an hour the rope shall be well fastened to theshore or I will perish in the attempt. "

Before anyone could stop him he leaped overboard. His head was soon seenlike a black point rising above the waves and then it disappeared inthe distance and mist, and but for the occasional pull upon the ball ofcord all would have thought him dead. At length it fell as if slackenedand the sailors looked at one another in silence, when a quick, violentpull, followed by a second and a third, told that Jacques had reachedthe shore. A strong rope was fastened to the cord and pulled to theshore, and by its aid many of the sailors were rescued. 

In 1833 Miss Prudence Crandall, a Quaker schoolmistress of Canterbury, Conn. , opened her school to negro children as well as to whites. Thewhole place was thrown into uproar; town meetings were called todenounce her; the most vindictive and inhuman measures were taken toisolate the school from the support of the townspeople; stores andchurches were closed against teacher and pupils; public conveyances weredenied them; physicians would not attend them; Miss Crandall's ownfriends dared not visit her; the house was assailed with rotten eggs andstones and finally set on fire. Yet the cause was righteous and theopposition proved vain and fruitless. Public opinion is often radicallywrong. 

Staunch old Admiral Farragut--he of the true heart and the ironwill--said to another officer of the navy, "Dupont, do you know why youdidn't get into Charleston with your ironclads?" "Oh, it was becausethe channel was so crooked. " "No, Dupont, it was not that. " "Well, therebel fire was perfectly horrible. " "Yes, but it wasn't that. " "What wasit, then?" "_It was because you didn't believe you could go in. _"

"I have tried Lord Howe on most important occasions. He never asked me_how_ he was to execute any service entrusted to his charge, but alwayswent straight forward and _did it_. " So answered Sir Edward Hawke, whenhis appointment of Howe for some peculiarly responsible duty wascriticized on the ground that Howe was the junior admiral in the fleet. 

There is a tradition among the Indians that Manitou was traveling in theinvisible world and came upon a hedge of thorns, then saw wild beastsglare upon him from the thicket, and after awhile stood before animpassable river. As he determined to proceed, the thorns turned outphantoms, the wild beasts powerless ghosts, and the river only a shadow. When we march on obstacles disappear. Many distinguished foreign andAmerican statesmen were present at a fashionable dinner party where winewas freely poured, but Schuyler Colfax, then Vice-President of theUnited States, declined to drink from a proffered cup. "Colfax does notdrink, " sneered a Senator who had already taken too much. "You areright, " said the Vice-President, "I dare not. "

A Western party recently invited the surviving Union and Confederateofficers to give an account of the bravest act observed by each duringthe Civil War. Colonel Thomas W. Higginson said that at a dinner atBeaufort, S. C. , where wine flowed freely and ribald jests were bandied, Dr. Miner, a slight, boyish fellow who did not drink, was told that hecould not go until he had drunk a toast, told a story, or sung a song. He replied: "I cannot sing, but I will give a toast, although I mustdrink it in water. It is 'Our Mothers. '" The men were so affected andashamed that some took him by the hand and thanked him for displayingcourage greater than that required to walk up to the mouth of a cannon. 

When Grant was in Houston several years ago, he was given a rousingreception. Naturally hospitable, and naturally inclined to like a man ofGrant's make-up, the Houstonites determined to go beyond any otherSouthern city in the way of a banquet and other manifestations of theirgood-will and hospitality. They made great preparations for the dinner, the committee taking great pains to have the finest wines that could beprocured for the table at night. When the time came to serve the wine, the head-waiter went first to Grant. Without a word the general quietlyturned down all the glasses at his plate. This movement was a greatsurprise to the Texans, but they were equal to the occasion. Without asingle word being spoken, every man along the line of the long tablesturned his glasses down, and there was not a drop of wine taken thatnight. 

Don't be like Uriah Heep, begging everybody's pardon for taking theliberty of being in the world. There is nothing attractive in timidity, nothing lovable in fear. Both are deformities and are repulsive. Manlycourage is dignified and graceful. The worst manners in the world arethose of persons conscious "of being beneath their position, and tryingto conceal it or make up for it by style. " It takes courage for a youngman to stand firmly erect while others are bowing and fawning for praiseand power. It takes courage to wear threadbare clothes while yourcomrades dress in broadcloth. It takes courage to remain in honestpoverty when others grow rich by fraud. It takes courage to say "No"squarely when those around you say "Yes. " It takes courage to do yourduty in silence and obscurity while others prosper and grow famousalthough neglecting sacred obligations. It takes courage to unmask yourtrue self, to show your blemishes to a condemning world, and to pass forwhat you really are. 

CHAPTER XV. 

WILL-POWER. 

 In the moral world there is nothing impossible if we can bring a thorough will to do it. --W. HUMBOLDT. 

 It is firmness that makes the gods on our side. --VOLTAIRE. 

 Stand firm, don't flutter. --FRANKLIN. 

 People do not lack strength they lack will. --VICTOR HUGO. 

 Perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out of countenance and make a seeming difficulty give way. --JEREMY COLLIER. 

 When a firm, decisive spirit is recognized, it is curious to see how the space clears around a man and leaves him room and freedom. --JOHN FOSTER. 

"Do you know, " asked Balzac's father, "that in literature a man must beeither a king or a beggar?" "Very well, " replied his son, "_I will be aking. _" After ten years of struggle with hardship and poverty, he wonsuccess as an author. 

"Why do you repair that magistrate's bench with such great care?" askeda bystander of a carpenter who was taking unusual pains. "Because I wishto make it easy against the time when I come to sit on it myself, "replied the other. He did sit on that bench as a magistrate a few yearslater. 

"_I will be marshal of France and a great general_, " exclaimed a youngFrench officer as he paced his room with hands tightly clenched. Hebecame a successful general and a marshal of France. 

"There is so much power in faith, " says Bulwer, "even when faith isapplied but to things human and earthly, that let a man but be firmlypersuaded that he is born to do some day, what at the moment seemsimpossible, and it is fifty to one but what he does it before he dies. "

There is about as much chance of idleness and incapacity winning realsuccess, or a high position in life, as there would be in producing aParadise Lost by shaking up promiscuously the separate words ofWebster's Dictionary, and letting them fall at random on the floor. Fortune smiles upon those who roll up their sleeves and put theirshoulders to the wheel; upon men who are not afraid of dreary, dry, irksome drudgery, men of nerve and grit who do not turn aside for dirtand detail. 

"Is there one whom difficulties dishearten?" asked John Hunter. "He willdo little. Is there one who will conquer? That kind of a man neverfails. "

"Circumstances, " says Milton, "have rarely favored famous men. They havefought their way to triumph through all sorts of opposing obstacles. "

"We have a half belief, " said Emerson, "that the person is possible whocan counterpoise all other persons. We believe that there may be a man_who is a match for events_, --one who never found his match, --againstwhom other men being dashed are broken, --one who can give you any oddsand beat you. "

The simple truth is that a will strong enough to keep a man continuallystriving for things not wholly beyond his powers will carry him in timevery far toward his chosen goal. 

At nineteen Bayard Taylor walked to Philadelphia, thirty miles, to finda publisher for fifteen of his poems. He wanted to see them printed in abook; but no publisher would undertake it. He returned to his homewhistling, however, showing that his courage and resolution had notabated. 

In Europe he was often forced to live on twenty cents a day for weeks onaccount of his poverty. He returned to London with only thirty centsleft. He tried to sell a poem of twelve hundred lines, which he had inhis knapsack, but no publisher wanted it. Of that time he wrote: "Mysituation was about as hopeless as it is possible to conceive. " But hiswill defied circumstances and he rose above them. For two years he livedon two hundred and fifty dollars a year in London, earning every dollarof it with his pen. 

His untimely death in 1879, at fifty-four, when Minister to Berlin, waslamented by the learned and great of all countries. 

We are told of a young New York inventor who about twenty years agospent every dollar he was worth in an experiment, which, if successful, would introduce his invention to public notice and insure his fortune, and, what he valued more, his usefulness. The next morning the dailypapers heaped unsparing ridicule upon him. Hope for the future seemedvain. He looked around the shabby room where his wife, a delicate littlewoman, was preparing breakfast. He was without a penny. He seemed like afool in his own eyes; all these years of hard work were wasted. He wentinto his chamber, sat down, and buried his face in his hands. 

At length, with a fiery heat flashing through his body, he stood erect. "It _shall_ succeed!" he said, shutting his teeth. His wife was cryingover the papers when he went back. "They are very cruel, " she said. "They don't understand. " "I'll make them understand, " he repliedcheerfully. "It was a fight for six years, " he said afterward. "Poverty, sickness and contempt followed me. I had nothing left but the _doggeddetermination_ that it should succeed. " It did succeed. The inventionwas a great and useful one. The inventor is now a prosperous and happyman. 

Napoleon was a terrible example of what the power of will canaccomplish. He always threw his whole force of body and mind direct uponhis work. Imbecile rulers and the nations they governed went down beforehim in succession. He was told that the Alps stood in the way of hisarmies, --"There shall be no Alps, " he said, and the road across theSimplon was constructed, through a district formerly almostinaccessible. "Impossible, " said he, "is a word only to be found in thedictionary of fools. " He was a man who toiled terribly; sometimesemploying and exhausting four secretaries at a time. He spared no one, not even himself. His influence inspired other men, and put a new lifeinto them. "I made my generals out of mud, " he said. 

To think we are able is almost to be so--to determine upon attainment, is frequently attainment itself. Thus, earnest resolution has oftenseemed to have about it almost a savor of omnipotence. The strength ofSuwarrow's character lay in his power of willing, and, like mostresolute persons, he preached it up as a system. 

Before Pizarro, D'Almagro and De Luque obtained any associates or armsor soldiers, and with a very imperfect knowledge of the country or thepowers they were to encounter, they celebrated a solemn mass in one ofthe great churches, dedicating themselves to the conquest of Peru. Thepeople expressed their contempt at such a monstrous project, and wereshocked at such sacrilege. But these decided men continued the serviceand afterward retired for their great preparation with an entireinsensibility to the expressions of contempt. Their firmness wasabsolutely invincible. The world has deplored the results of thisexpedition, but there is a great lesson for us in the firmness ofdecision of its leaders. Such firmness would keep to its course andretain its purpose unshaken amidst the ruins of the world. 

At the battle of Marengo the French army was supposed to be defeated;but, while Bonaparte and his staff were considering their next move, Dessaix suggested that there was yet time to retrieve their disaster, asit was only about the middle of the afternoon. Napoleon rallied his men, renewed the fight, and won a great victory over the Austrians, thoughthe unfortunate Dessaix lost his own life on that field. 

What has chance ever done in the world? Has it built any cities? Has itinvented any telephones, any telegraphs? Has it built any steamships, established any universities, any asylums, any hospitals? Was there anychance in Cæsar's crossing the Rubicon? What had chance to do withNapoleon's career, with Wellington's, or Grant's, or Von Moltke's? Everybattle was won before it was begun. What had luck to do with Thermopylæ, Trafalgar, Gettysburg? Our successes we ascribe to ourselves; ourfailures to destiny. 

A vacillating man, no matter what his abilities, is invariably pushed tothe wall in the race of life by a determined will. It is he who resolvesto succeed, and who at every fresh rebuff begins resolutely again, thatreaches the goal. The shores of fortune are covered with the strandedwrecks of men of brilliant ability, but who have wanted courage, faithand decision, and have therefore perished in sight of more resolute butless capable adventurers, who succeeded in making port. Hundreds of mengo to their graves in obscurity, who have been obscure only because theylacked the pluck to make a first effort, and who, could they only haveresolved to begin, would have astonished the world by their achievementsand successes. The fact is, as Sydney Smith has well said, that in orderto do anything in this world that is worth doing, we must not standshivering on the bank, and thinking of the cold and the danger, but jumpin and scramble through as well as we can. 

Is not this a grand privilege of man, immortal man, that though he maynot be able to stir a finger; that though a moth may crush him; thatmerely by a righteous will, he is raised above the stars; that by it heoriginates a good in the universe, which the universe could notannihilate; a good which can defy extinction, though all createdenergies of intelligence or matter were combined against it?

A man whose moral nature is ascendant is not the subject, but thesuperior of circumstances. He is free; nay, more, he is a king; andthough this sovereignty may have been won by many desperate battles, once on the throne, and holding the sceptre with a firm grasp, he has aroyalty of which neither time nor accident can strip him. 

What can you do with a man who has an invincible purpose in him; whonever knows when he is beaten; and who, when his legs are shot off, willfight on the stumps? Difficulties and opposition do not daunt him. Hethrives upon persecution; it only stimulates him to more determinedendeavor. Give a man the alphabet and an iron will, and who shall placebounds to his achievements! Imprison a Galileo for his discoveries inscience, and he will experiment with the straw in his cell. DepriveEuler of his eyesight, and he but studies harder upon mental problems, thus developing marvelous powers of mathematical calculation. Lock upthe poor Bedford tinker in jail, and he will write the finest allegoryin the world, or will leave his imperishable thoughts upon the walls ofhis cell. Burn the body of Wycliffe and throw the ashes into the Severn;but they will be swept to the ocean, which will carry them, permeatedwith his principles, to all lands. _The world always listens to a manwith a will in him. _ You might as well snub the sun as such men asBismarck and Grant. 

Hope would storm the castle of despair; it gives courage whendespondency would give up the battle of life. He is the best doctorwho can implant _hope_ and courage in the human soul. So he is thegreatest man who can inspire us to the grandest achievements. 

 "Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky Gives us free scope; and only backward pulls Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull. "

 "How much I could do if I only tried. "

CHAPTER XVI. 

GUARD YOUR WEAK POINT. 

 He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty: and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city. --BIBLE. 

 The first and best of victories is for a man to conquer himself: to be conquered by himself is, of all things, the most shameful and vile. --PLATO. 

 The worst education which teaches self-denial is better than the best which teaches everything else and not that. --JOHN STERLING. 

 Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power. --SENECA. 

 The energy which issues in growth, or assimilates knowledge, must originate in self and be self-directed. --THOMAS J. MORGAN. 

 The foes with which they waged their strife Were passion, self and sin; The victories that laureled life, Were fought and won within. --EDWARD H. DEWART. 

"I'll sign it after awhile, " a drunkard would reply, when repeatedlyurged by his wife to sign the pledge; "but I don't like to break off atonce, the best way is to get used to a thing. " "Very well, old man, "said his wife, "see if you don't fall into a hole one of these days, with no one to help you out. "

Not long after, when intoxicated, he did fall into a shallow well, buthis shouts for help were fortunately heard by his wife. "Didn't I tellyou so?" she asked. "It's lucky I was in hearing or you might havedrowned. " He took hold of the bucket and she tugged at the windlass; butwhen he was near the top her grasp slipped and down he went into thewater again. This was repeated until he screamed: "Look here, you'redoing that on purpose, I know you are. " "Well, now, I am, " admitted thewife. "Don't you remember telling me it's best to get used to a thing bydegrees? I'm afraid if I bring you up sudden, you would not find itwholesome. " Finding that his case was becoming desperate, he promised tosign the pledge at once. His wife raised him out immediately, but warnedhim that if ever he became intoxicated and fell into the well again, shewould leave him there. 

A man captured a young tiger and resolved to make a pet of it. It grewup like a kitten, fond and gentle. There was no evidence of its savage, bloodthirsty nature, and it seemed perfectly harmless. But one day whilethe master was playing with his pet, the rough tongue upon his handstarted the blood from a scratch. The moment the beast tasted blood, hisferocious tiger nature was roused, and he rushed upon his master to tearhim to pieces. Sometimes the appetite for drink, which was thought tobe buried years ago, is roused by the taste or the smell of "the devilin solution, " and the wretched victim finds himself a helpless slave tothe passion which he thought dead. 

When a young man, Hugh Miller once drank the two glasses of whiskeywhich fell to his share at the usual treat of drink of the masons withwhom he worked. On reaching home he tried to read Bacon's Essays, hisfavorite book, but he could not distinguish the letters or comprehendthe meaning. "The condition into which I had brought myself was, I felt, one of degradation, " said he. "I had sunk, by my own act, for the time, to a lower level of intelligence than that on which it was my privilegeto be placed; and though the state could have been no very favorable onefor forming a resolution, I in that hour determined that I should neveragain sacrifice my capacity of intellectual enjoyment to a drinkingusage; and with God's help I was enabled to hold by the determination. "

In a certain manufacturing town an employer one Saturday paid to hisworkmen $700 in crisp new bills that had been secretly marked. On Monday$450 of those identical bills were deposited in the bank by thesaloon-keepers. When the fact was made known, the workmen were sostartled by it that they helped to make the place a no-license town. Thetimes would not be so "hard" for the workmen if the saloons did nottake in so much of their wages. If they would organize a strike againstthe saloons, they would find the result to be better than an increase ofwages, and to include an increase of savings. 

How often we might read the following sign over the threshold of ayouthful life: "For sale, grand opportunities, for a song;" "goldenchances for beer;" "magnificent opportunities exchanged for a littlesensual enjoyment;" "for exchange, a beautiful home, devoted wife, lovely children, for drink;" "for sale, cheap, all the magnificentpossibilities of a brilliant life, a competence, for one chance in athousand at the gambling table;" "for exchange, bright prospects, abrilliant outlook, a cultivated intelligence, a college education, askilled hand, an observant eye, valuable experience, great tact, allexchanged for rum, for a muddled brain, a bewildered intellect, ashattered nervous system, poisoned blood, a diseased body, for fattydegeneration of the heart, for Bright's disease, for a drunkard'sliver. "

With almost palsied hand, at a temperance meeting, John B. Gough signedthe pledge. For six days and nights in a wretched garret, without amouthful of food, with scarcely a moment's sleep, he fought the fearfulbattle with appetite. Weak, famished, almost dying, he crawled into thesunlight; but he had conquered the demon which had almost killed him. Gough used to describe the struggles of a man who tried to leave offusing tobacco. He threw away what he had, and said that was the end ofit; but no, it was only the beginning of it. He would chew camomile, gentian, tooth-picks, but it was of no use. He bought another plug oftobacco and put it in his pocket. He wanted a chew awfully, but helooked at it and said, "You are a _weed_, and I am a _man_. I'll masteryou if I die for it;" and he did, while carrying it in his pocket daily. 

There was an abbot that desired a piece of ground that lay convenientlyfor him. The owner refused to sell; yet with much persuasion he wascontented to let it. The abbot hired it and covenanted only to farm itfor one crop. He had his bargain, and sowed it with acorns--a crop thatlasted three hundred years. So Satan asks to get possession of our soulsby asking us to permit some small sin to enter, some one wrong thatseems of no great account. But when once he has entered and planted theseeds and beginnings of evil, he holds his ground. 

"Teach self-denial and make its practice pleasurable, " says WalterScott, "and you create for the world a destiny more sublime than everissued from the brain of the wildest dreamer. "

Thomas A. Edison was once asked why he was a total abstainer. He said, "I thought I had a better use for my head. "

Byron could write poetry easily, for it was merely indulging his naturalpropensity; but to curb his temper, soothe his discontent, and controlhis animal appetites was a very different thing. At all events, itseemed so great to him that he never seriously attempted self-conquest. Let every youth who would not be shipwrecked on life's voyage cultivatethis one great virtue, "self-control. " There is nothing so important toa youth starting out in life as a thoroughly trained and cultivatedwill; everything depends upon it. If he has it, he will succeed; if hedoes not have it, he will fail. 

"The first and best of victories, " says Plato, "is for a man to conquerhimself; to be conquered by himself is, of all things, the most shamefuland vile. "

"Silence, " says Zimmerman, "is the safest response for all thecontradiction that arises from impertinence, vulgarity, or envy. "

"He is a fool who cannot be angry, " says English, "but he is a wise manwho will not. "

Seneca, one of the greatest of the ancient philosophers, said that "weshould every night call ourselves to account. What infirmity have Imastered to-day? what passion opposed? what temptation resisted? whatvirtue acquired?" and then he follows with the profound truth that "ourvices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to theshrift. " If you cannot at first control your anger, learn to controlyour tongue, which, like fire, is a good servant, but a hard master. 

It does no good to get angry. Some sins have a seeming compensation orapology, a present gratification of some sort, but anger has none. A manfeels no better for it. It is really a torment, and when the storm ofpassion has cleared away, it leaves one to see that he has been a fool. And he has made himself a fool in the eyes of others too. 

The wife of Socrates, Xanthippe, was a woman of a most fantastical andfurious spirit. At one time, having vented all the reproaches uponSocrates her fury could suggest, he went out and sat before the door. His calm and unconcerned behavior but irritated her so much the more;and, in the excess of her rage, she ran upstairs and emptied a vesselupon his head, at which he only laughed and said that "so much thundermust needs produce a shower. " Alcibiades, his friend, talking with himabout his wife, told him he wondered how he could bear such aneverlasting scold in the same house with him. He replied, "I have soaccustomed myself to expect it, that it now offends me no more than thenoise of carriages in the street. "

It is said of Socrates, that whether he was teaching the rules of anexact morality, whether he was answering his corrupt judges, or wasreceiving sentence of death, or swallowing the poison, he was still thesame man; that is to say, calm, quiet, undisturbed, intrepid--in a word, wise to the last. 

"It is not enough to have great qualities, " says La Rochefoucauld; "weshould also have the management of them. " No man can call himselfeducated until every voluntary muscle obeys his will. 

"You ask whether it would not be manly to resent a great injury, " saidEardley Wilmot; "I answer that it would be manly to resent it, but itwould be Godlike to forgive it. "

"He who, with strong passions, remains chaste; he who, keenly sensitive, with manly power of indignation in him, can be provoked, and yetrestrain himself and forgive--these are strong men, the spiritualheroes. "

To feel provoked or exasperated at a trifle, when the nerves areexhausted, is, perhaps, natural to us in our imperfect state. But whyput into the shape of speech the annoyance which, once uttered, isremembered; which may burn like a blistering wound, or rankle like apoisoned arrow? If a child be crying or a friend capricious, or aservant unreasonable, be careful what you say. Do not speak while youfeel the impulse of anger, for you will be almost certain to say toomuch, to say more than your cooler judgment will approve, and to speakin a way that you will regret. Be silent until the "sweet by and by, "when you will be calm, rested, and self-controlled. 

But self-respect must be accompanied by self-conquest, or our strongfeelings may prove but runaway horses. He who would command others mustfirst learn to obey, and he who would command his own powers must learnto be submissive to the still small voice within. Discipline thepassions, curb pride and impatience, restrain all hasty impulses. Denyyourself the gratification of any desire not sanctioned by reason. Shameand its consequent degradation follow the loss of our own good opinionrather than the esteem of others. Too many yield in the perpetualconflict between temptation to gratify the coarser appetites andaspiration for the good, the true, and the beautiful. Voices unheard bythose around us whisper "Don't, " but too often self-respect is lost, thewill lies prostrate, and the debauch goes on. Such battles must befought by all; be ours the victory born of self-control, aided by thatHeaven which always helps him who prays while putting his own shoulderto the wheel. 

No man had a better heart or more thoroughly hated oppression thanEdmund Burke. He possessed neither experience in affairs, nor a tranquiljudgment, nor the rule over his own spirit, so that his genius, underthe impulse of his bewildering passions, wrought much evil to hiscountry and to Europe, even while he rendered noble service to the causeof commercial freedom, to Ireland, and to America. 

Burns could not resist the temptation to utter his clever sarcasms atanother's expense, and one of his biographers has said that he made ahundred enemies for every ten jokes he made. But Burns could no morecontrol his appetite than his tongue. 

 "Thus thoughtless follies laid him low And stained his name. "

Xanthus, the philosopher, told his servant that on the morrow he wasgoing to have some friends to dine, and asked him to get the best thinghe could find in the market. The philosopher and his guests sat downthe next day at the table. They had nothing but tongue--four or fivecourses of tongue--tongue cooked in this way, and tongue cooked in thatway, and the philosopher lost his patience, and said to his servant, "Didn't I tell you to get the best thing in the market?" He said, "I didget the best thing in the market. Isn't the tongue the organ ofsociality, the organ of eloquence, the organ of kindness, the organ ofworship?" Then Xanthus said, "To-morrow I want you to get the worstthing in the market. " And on the morrow the philosopher sat at thetable, and there was nothing there but tongue--four or five courses oftongue--tongue in this shape, and tongue in that shape--and thephilosopher again lost his patience, and said, "Didn't I tell you to getthe worst thing in the market?" The servant replied, "I did; for isn'tthe tongue the organ of blasphemy, the organ of defamation, the organ oflying?"

"I can reform my people, " said Peter the Great, "but I cannot reformmyself. " He forbade all Russians to wear beards, and to quell theinsurrection which resulted, he had 8000 revolters beheaded. With ahatchet he began the ghastly work. He had his own son beheaded. 

He who cannot resist temptation is not a man. He is wanting in thehighest attributes of humanity. The honor and nobleness of the old"knight-errantry" consisted in defending the innocence of men andprotecting the chastity of women against the assaults of others. But thetruer and nobler knighthood protects the property and the character, theinnocence and the chastity of others against one's self. We should allbe posted upon our weak points, for after all there are many emergenciesin life when these weak points, not our strong ones, will measure ourmanhood and our strength. Many a woman whom a mouse would frighten outof her wits would not shrink from assisting in terrible surgicaloperations in our city or war hospitals, and many an officer andsoldier who would walk up to the cannon's mouth without a tremor inbattle, would not dare to say his soul was his own in a society parlor. Many a great statesman has quailed before the ringer of scorn of afellow-Congressman, and has been completely cowed by a hiss from thegallery or a ridiculing paragraph in a newspaper. We all have tenderspots, weak spots, and a man can never know his strength who does notstudy his weaknesses. 

"Violent passions and ardent feelings are seldom found united withcomplete self-command; but when they are they form the strongestpossible character, for there is all the power of clear thought and cooljudgment impelled by the resistless energy of feeling. This combinationWashington possessed; for in his impetuosity there was no foolishrashness, and in his passion no injustice. Besides, whatever violencethere might be within, the explosion seldom came to the surface, andwhen it did it was arrested at once by the stern mandate of his will. Henever lost the mastery of himself in any emergency, and in 'ruling hisspirit' showed himself greater than in 'taking a city. '

"It is one of the astonishing things in his life that, amid the perfectchaos of feeling into which he was thrown, --amid the distracted counselsand still more distracted affairs that surrounded him, --he never oncelost the perfect equilibrium of his own mind. The contagion of fear anddoubt and despair could not touch him. He did not seem susceptible tothe common influences which affect men. His soul poised on its owncentre, reposed calmly there through all the storms that beat for sevenyears on his noble breast. The ingratitude and folly of those who shouldhave been his allies, the insults of his foes, and the frowns of fortunenever provoked him into a rash act, or deluded him into a single error. "

Horace Mann says that there must be a time when the vista of the future, with all its possibilities of glory and of shame, first opens to thevision of youth. Then is he summoned to make his choice between truthand treachery; between honor and dishonor; between purity andprofligacy; between moral life and moral death. And as he doubts orbalances between the heavenward or hellward course; as he struggles torise or consents to fall; is there in all the universe of God aspectacle of higher exultation or of deeper pathos? Within him are theappetites of a brute and the attributes of an angel; and when these meetin council to make up the roll of his destiny and seal his fate, shallthe beast hound out the seraph? Shall the young man, now conscious ofthe largeness of his sphere and of the sovereignty of his choice, wedthe low ambitions of the world, and seek, with their emptiness, to fillhis immortal desires? Because he has a few animal wants that must besupplied, shall he become all animal, --an epicure and an inebriate, --andblasphemously make it the first doctrine of his catechism, --"the ChiefEnd of Man?"--to glorify his stomach and enjoy it? Because it is the lawof self-preservation that he shall provide for himself, and the law ofreligion that he shall provide for his family, when he has one, must he, therefore, cut away all the bonds of humanity that bind him to his race, forswear charity, crush down every prompting of benevolence, and if hecan have the palace and equipage of the prince, and the table of asybarite, become a blind man, and a deaf man, and a dumb man, when hewalks the streets where hunger moans and nakedness shivers?

The strong man is the one who ever keeps himself under strictdiscipline, who never once allows the lower to usurp the place of thehigher in him; who makes his passions his servants and never allows themto be his master; who is ever led by his mind and not by hisinclinations. He drills and disciplines his desires and keeps the rootsof his life under ground, and never allows them to interfere with hischaracter. He is never the slave of his inclinations, nor the sport ofimpulse. He is the commander of himself and heads his ship due northeven in the wildest tempests of passion. He is never the slave of hisstrongest desire. 

A noted teacher has said that the propensities and habits are asteachable as Latin and Greek, while they are infinitely more essentialto happiness. We are very largely the creatures of our wills. Byconstantly looking on the bright side of things, by viewing everythinghopefully, by setting the face as a flint every hour of every day towardall that is harmonious and beautiful in life, and refusing to listen tothe discord or to look at the ugly side of life, by constantly directingthe thought toward what is noble, grand and true, we can soon formhabits which will develop into a beautiful character, a harmonious andwell-rounded life. We are creatures of habit, and by knowing the laws ofits formation we can, in a little while, build up a network of habitabout us, which will protect us from most of the ugly, selfish anddegrading things of life. In fact, the only real happiness and unalloyedsatisfaction we get out of life, is the product of self-control. It isthe great guardian of all the virtues, without which none of them issafe. It is the sentinel, which stands on guard at the door of life, toadmit friends and exclude enemies. 

"I call that mind free, " says Channing, "which jealously guards itsintellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which doesnot content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opensitself to light whencesoever it may come, which receives new truth as anangel from heaven, which, whilst consulting others, inquires still moreof the oracle within; itself, and uses instructions from abroad, not tosupersede, but to quicken and exalt its own energies. I call that mindfree which is not passively framed by outward circumstances, which isnot swept away by the torrent of events, which is not the creature ofaccidental impulse, but which bends events to its own improvement, andacts from an inward spring, from immutable principles which it hasdeliberately espoused. I call that mind free which protects itselfagainst the usurpations of society, which does not cower to humanopinion, which feels itself accountable to a higher tribunal than man's, which respects a higher law than fashion, which respects itself too muchto be the slave or tool of the many or the few. I call that mind freewhich through confidence in God and in the power of virtue has cast offall fear but that of wrong-doing, which no menace or peril can enthrall, which is calm in the midst of tumults, and possesses itself though allelse be lost. I call that mind free which resists the bondage of habit, which does not mechanically repeat itself and copy the past, which doesnot live on its old virtues, which does not enslave itself to preciserules, but which forgets what is behind, listens for new and highermonitions of conscience, and rejoices to pour itself forth in fresh andhigher exertions. I call that mind free which is jealous of its ownfreedom, which guards itself from being merged in others, which guardsits empire over itself as nobler than the empire of the world. "

CHAPTER XVII. 

STICK. 

 Patience is the courage of the conqueror; it is the virtue, _par excellence_, of Man against Destiny, of the One against the World, and of the Soul against Matter. Therefore this is the courage of the Gospel; and its importance, in a social view--its importance to races and institutions--cannot be too earnestly inculcated. --BULWER. 

 Perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out of countenance, and make a seeming impossibility give way. --JEREMY COLLIER. 

 To bear is to conquer fate. --CAMPBELL. 

 The nerve that never relaxes, the eye that never blenches, the thought that never wanders, --these are the masters of victory. --BURKE. 

 Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait. --LONGFELLOW. 

"How long did it take you to learn to play?" asked a young man ofGeradini. "Twelve hours a day for twenty years, " replied the greatviolinist. Layman Beecher's father, when asked how long it took him towrite his celebrated sermon on the "Government of God, " replied, "Aboutforty years. "

"If you will study a year I will teach you to sing well, " said anItalian music teacher to a pupil who wished to know what can be hopedfor with study; "if two years, you may excel. If you will practice thescale constantly for three years, I will make you the best tenor inItaly; if for four years, you may have the world at your feet. "

Perceiving that Caffarelli had a fine tenor voice and unusual talent, ateacher offered to give him a thorough musical education free of charge, provided the pupil would promise never to complain of the course ofinstruction given. The first year the master gave nothing but thescales, compelling the youth to practice them over and over again. Thesecond year it was the same, the third, and the fourth, the conditionsof the bargain being the only reply to any question in relation to achange from such monotonous drill. The fifth year the teacher introducedchromatics and thorough bass, and, at its close, when Caffarelli lookedfor something more brilliant and interesting, the master said: "Go, myson, I can teach you nothing more. You are the first singer of Italy andof the world. " The _mastery_ of scales and diatonics gave him power tosing anything. 

"Keep at the helm, " said President Porter; "steer your own ship, andremember that the great art of commanding is to take a fair share of thework. Strike out. Assume your own position. Put potatoes in a cart, over a rough road, and the small ones go to the bottom. "

"Never depend upon your genius, " said John Ruskin, in the words ofJoshua Reynolds; "if you have talent, industry will improve it; if youhave none, industry will supply the deficiency. "

"The only merit to which I lay claim, " said Hugh Miller, "is that ofpatient research--a merit in which whoever wills may rival or surpassme; and this humble faculty of patience when rightly developed may leadto more extraordinary development of ideas than even genius itself. "

Titian, the greatest master of color the world has seen, used to say:"White, red and black, these are all the colors that a painter needs, but he must know how to use them. " It took fifty years of constant, hardpractice to bring him to his full mastery. 

"How much grows everywhere if we do but wait!" exclaims Carlyle. "Not adifficulty but can transfigure itself into a triumph; not even adeformity, but if our own soul have imprinted worth on it, will growdear to us. "

Persistency is characteristic of all men who have accomplished anythinggreat. They may lack in some other particular, have many weaknesses, oreccentricities, but the quality of persistence is never absent in asuccessful man. No matter what opposition he meets or whatdiscouragements overtake him, he is always persistent. Drudgery cannotdisgust him, obstacles cannot discourage him, labor cannot weary him. Hewill persist, no matter what comes or what goes; it is a part of hisnature. He could almost as easily stop breathing. 

It is not so much brilliancy of intellect or fertility of resource aspersistency of effort, constancy of purpose, that makes a great man. Persistency always gives confidence. Everybody believes in the man whopersists. He may meet misfortunes, sorrows and reverses, but everybodybelieves that he will ultimately triumph because they know there is nokeeping him down. "Does he keep at it, is he persistent?" is thequestion which the world asks of a man. 

Even the man with small ability will often succeed if he has the qualityof persistence, where a genius without persistence would fail. 

"How hard I worked at that tremendous shorthand, and all improvementappertaining to it, " said Dickens. "I will only add to what I havealready written of my perseverance at this time of my life, and of apatient and continuous energy which then began to be matured within me, and which I know to be the strong point of my character, if it have anystrength at all, that there, on looking back, I find the source of mysuccess. "

"I am sorry to say that I don't think this is in your line, " saidWoodfall the reporter, after Sheridan had made his first speech inParliament. "You had better have stuck to your former pursuits. " Withhead on his hand Sheridan mused for a time, then looked up and said, "Itis in me, and it shall come out of me. " From the same man came thatharangue against Warren Hastings which the orator Fox called the bestspeech ever made in the House of Commons. 

"The man who is perpetually hesitating which of two things he will dofirst, " said William Wirt, "will do neither. " The man who resolves, butsuffers his resolution to be changed by the first counter-suggestion ofa friend--who fluctuates from opinion to opinion, from plan to plan, andveers like a weather-cock to every point of the compass, with everybreath of caprice that blows, can never accomplish anything great oruseful. Instead of being progressive in anything, he will be at beststationary, and, more probably, retrograde in all. 

Great writers have ever been noted for their tenacity of purpose. Theirworks have not been flung off from minds aglow with genius, but havebeen elaborated and elaborated into grace and beauty, until every traceof their efforts has been obliterated. Bishop Butler worked twenty yearsincessantly on his "Analogy, " and even then was so dissatisfied that hewanted to burn it. Rousseau says he obtained the ease and grace of hisstyle only by ceaseless inquietude, by endless blotches and erasures. Virgil worked eleven years on the Æneid. The note-books of great menlike Hawthorne and Emerson are tell-tales of enormous drudgery, of theyears put into a book which may be read in an hour. Montesquieu wastwenty-five years writing his "Esprit de Louis, " yet you can read it insixty minutes. Adam Smith spent ten years on his "Wealth of Nations. " Arival playwright once laughed at Euripides for spending three days onthree lines, when he had written five hundred lines. "But your fivehundred lines in three days will be dead and forgotten, while my threelines will live forever, " replied Euripides. 

Sir Fowell Buxton thought he could do as well as others, if he devotedtwice as much time and labor as they did. Ordinary means andextraordinary application have done most of the great things in theworld. 

Defoe offered the manuscript of Robinson Crusoe to many booksellers andall but one refused it. Addison's first play, Rosamond, was hissed offthe stage, but the editor of the Spectator and Tattler was made of sternstuff and was determined that the world should listen to him, and itdid. 

David Livingstone said: "Those who have never carried a book through thepress can form no idea of the amount of toil it involves. The processhas increased my respect for authors a thousand-fold. I think I wouldrather cross the African continent again than undertake to write anotherbook. "

"For the statistics of the negro population of South America alone, "says Robert Dale Owen, "I examined more than a hundred and fiftyvolumes. "

Another author tells us that he wrote paragraphs and whole pages of hisbook as many as fifty times. 

It is said of one of Longfellow's poems that it was written in fourweeks, but that he spent six months in correcting and cutting it down. Bulwer declared that he had rewritten some of his briefer productions asmany as eight or nine times before their publication. One of Tennyson'spieces was rewritten fifty times. John Owen was twenty years on his"Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews;" Gibbon on his "Decline andFall, " twenty years; and Adam Clark, on his "Commentary, " twenty-sixyears. Carlyle spent fifteen years on his "Frederick the Great. "

A great deal of time is consumed in reading before some books areprepared. George Eliot read 1000 books before she wrote "DanielDeronda. " Allison read 2000 before he completed his history. It is saidof another that he read 20, 000 and wrote only two books. 

Virgil spent several years on the Georgics, which could be printed intwo columns of an ordinary newspaper. 

"Generally speaking, " said Sydney Smith, "the life of all truly greatmen has been a life of intense and incessant labor. They have commonlypassed the first half of life in the gross darkness of indigenthumility, --overlooked, mistaken, condemned by weaker men, --thinkingwhile others slept, reading while others rioted, feeling somethingwithin them that told them they should not always be kept down among thedregs of the world. And then, when their time has come, and some littleaccident has given them their first occasion, they have burst out intothe light and glory of public life, rich with the spoils of time, andmighty in all the labors and struggles of the mind. "

Malibran said: "If I neglect my practice a day, I see the difference inmy execution; if for two days, my friends see it; and if for a week, allthe world knows my failure. " Constant, persistent struggle she found tobe the price of her marvelous power. 

"If I am building a mountain, " said Confucius, "and stop before the lastbasketful of earth is placed on the summit, I have failed. "

"Young gentlemen, " said Francis Wayland, "remember that nothing canstand day's work. "

America will never produce any great art until our resources aredeveloped and we get more time. As a people we have not yet learned theart of patience. We do not know how to wait. Think of an American artistspending seven, eight, ten, and even twelve years on a single paintingas did Titian, Michael Angelo and many of the other old masters. Thinkof an American sculptor spending years and years upon a singlemasterpiece, as did the Greeks and Romans. We have not yet learned thesecret of working and waiting. 

"The single element in all the progressive movements of my pencil, " saidthe great David Wilkie, "was persevering industry. "

The kind of ability which most men rank highest is that which enablesits possessor to do what he undertakes, and attain the object of hisambition or desire. 

"The reader of a newspaper does not see the first insertion of anordinary advertisement, " says a French writer. "The second insertion hesees, but does not read; the third insertion he reads; the fourthinsertion he looks at the price; the fifth insertion he speaks of it tohis wife; the sixth insertion he is ready to purchase, and the seventhinsertion he purchases. "

The large fees which make us envy the great lawyer or doctor are notremuneration for the few minutes' labor of giving advice, but for themental stores gathered during the precious spare moments of many a yearwhile others were sleeping or enjoying holidays. A client willfrequently object to paying fifty dollars for an opinion written in fiveminutes, but such an opinion could be written only by one who has read ahundred law books. If the lawyer had not previously read those books, but should keep a client waiting until he could read them with care, there would be fewer complaints that fees of this kind are not earned. 

We are told that perseverance built the pyramids on Egypt's plains, erected the gorgeous temple at Jerusalem, inclosed in adamant theChinese Empire, scaled the stormy, cloud-capped Alps, opened a highwaythrough the watery wilderness of the Atlantic, leveled the forests ofthe new world, and reared in its stead a community of States andnations. Perseverance has wrought from the marble block the exquisitecreations of genius, painted on canvas the gorgeous mimicry of nature, and engraved on a metallic surface the viewless substance of the shadow. Perseverance has put in motion millions of spindles, winged as manyflying shuttles, harnessed thousands of iron steeds to as many freightedcars, and sent them flying from town to town and nation to nation;tunneled mountains of granite, and annihilated space with thelightning's speed. Perseverance has whitened the waters of the worldwith the sails of a hundred nations, navigated every sea and exploredevery land. Perseverance has reduced nature in her thousand forms to asmany sciences, taught her laws, prophesied her future movements, measured her untrodden spaces, counted her myriad hosts of worlds, andcomputed their distances, dimensions, and velocities. 

"Whoever is resolved to excel in painting, or, indeed, in any otherart, " said Reynolds, "must bring all his mind to bear upon that oneobject from the moment that he rises till he goes to bed. "

"If you work hard two weeks without selling a book, " wrote a publisherto an agent, "you will make a success of it. "

"Know thy work and do it, " said Carlyle; "and work at it like aHercules. One monster there is in the world--an idle man. "

CHAPTER XVIII. 

SAVE. 

 If you want to test a young man and ascertain whether nature made him for a king or a subject, give him a thousand dollars and see what he will do with it. If he is born to conquer and command, he will put it quietly away till he is ready to use it as opportunity offers. If he is born to serve, he will immediately begin to spend it in gratifying his ruling propensity. --PARTON. 

 The man who builds, and lacks wherewith to pay, Provides a home from which to run away. --YOUNG. 

 Buy what thou hast no need of, and ere long thou shalt sell thy necessaries. 

 For age and want save while you may: No morning sun lasts a whole day. --FRANKLIN. 

 Whatever be your talents, whatever be your prospects, never speculate away on a chance of a palace that which you may need as a provision against the workhouse. --BULWER. 

"What do you do with all these books?" "Oh, that library is my 'onecigar a day, '" was the response. "What do you mean?" "Mean! Just this:when you bothered me so about being a man, and learning to smoke, I'djust been reading about a young fellow who bought books with money thatothers would have spent in smoke, and I thought I'd try and do thesame. You remember, I said I should allow myself one cigar a day. ""Yes. " "Well, I never smoked. I just put by the price of a five-centcigar every day, and as the money accumulated I bought books--the booksyou see there. " "Do you mean to say that those books cost no more thanthat? Why there are dollars' worth of them. " "Yes, I know there are. Ihad six years more of my apprenticeship to serve when you persuaded meto 'be a man. ' I put by the money I have told you of, which of course atfive cents a day amounted to $18. 25 a year or $109. 50 in six years. Ikeep those books by themselves, as a result of my apprenticeshipcigar-money; and if you'd done as I did, you would by this time havesaved many, many more dollars than that, and been in business besides. "

If a man will begin at the age of twenty and lay by twenty-six centsevery working day, investing at 7 per cent. Compound interest, he willhave thirty-two thousand dollars when he is seventy years old. Twentycents a day is no unusual expenditure for beer or cigars, yet in fiftyyears it would easily amount to twenty thousand dollars. Even a savingof one dollar a week from the date of one's majority would give him onethousand dollars for each of the last ten of the allotted years of life. "What maintains one vice would bring up two children. "

Who does not feel honored by his relationship to Dr. Franklin, whetheras a townsman or a countryman, or even as belonging to the same race?Who does not feel a sort of personal complacency in that frugality ofhis youth which laid the foundation for so much competence andgenerosity in his mature age; in that wise discrimination of hisoutlays, which held the culture of the soul in absolute supremacy overthe pleasures of the sense; and in that consummate mastership of thegreat art of living, which has carried his practical wisdom into everycottage in Christendom, and made his name immortal? And yet, how fewthere are among us who would not disparage, nay, ridicule and contemn ayoung man who should follow Franklin's example. 

Washington examined the minutest expenditures of his family, even whenPresident of the United States. He understood that without economy nonecan be rich, and with it none need be poor. 

Napoleon examined his domestic bills himself, detected overcharges anderrors. 

Unfortunately Congress can pass no law that will remedy the vice ofliving beyond one's means. 

"We are ruined, " says Colton, "not by what we really want, but by whatwe think we do. Therefore never go abroad in search of your wants; ifthey be real wants, they will come home in search of you; for he thatbuys what he does not want will soon want what he cannot buy. "

"I hope that there will not be another sale, " exclaimed Horace Walpole, "for I have not an inch of room nor a farthing left. " A woman oncebought an old door-plate with "Thompson" on it because she thought itmight come in handy some time. The habit of buying what you don't needbecause it is cheap encourages extravagance. "Many have been ruined bybuying good pennyworths. "

Barnum tells the story of one of his acquaintances, whose wife wouldhave a new and elegant sofa, which in the end cost him thirty thousanddollars. When the sofa reached the house it was found necessary to getchairs "to match, " then sideboards, carpets, and tables, "to correspond"with them, and so on through the entire stock of furniture, when at lastit was found that the house itself was quite too small and old-fashionedfor the furniture, and a new one was built "to correspond" with the sofaand _et ceteras_: "thus, " added my friend, "running up an outlay of$30, 000 caused by that single sofa, and saddling on me in the shape ofservants, equipage, and the necessary expenses attendant on keeping up afine 'establishment' a yearly outlay of eleven thousand dollars, and ahabit of extravagance which was a constant menace to my prosperity. "

Cicero said: "Not to have a mania for buying, is to possess a revenue. "Many are carried away by the habit of bargain-buying. "Here's somethingwonderfully cheap; let's buy it. " "Have you any use for it?" "No, not atpresent; but it is sure to come in useful, some time. "

"Annual income, " says Macawber, "twenty pounds; annual expenditure, nineteen six, result--happiness. Annual income, twenty pounds; annualexpenditure, twenty pounds ought and six, result--misery. "

"Hunger, rags, cold, hard work, contempt, suspicion, unjust reproach, are disagreeable, " says Horace Greeley; "but debt is infinitely worsethan them all. "

"If I had but fifty cents a week to live on, " said Greeley, "I'd buy apeck of corn and parch it before I'd owe any man a dollar. "

To find out uses for the persons or things which are now wasted in lifeis to be the glorious work of the men of the next generation, and thatwhich will contribute most to their enrichment. 

Economizing "in spots" or by freaks is no economy at all; it must bedone by management. 

Let us learn the meaning of economy. Economy is a high, humane office, asacrament, when its aim is great; when it is the prudence of simpletastes, when it is practiced for freedom, or love or devotion. Much ofthe economy we see in houses is of a base origin, and is best kept outof sight. Parched corn eaten to-day that I may have roast fowl for mydinner on Sunday, is a baseness, but parched corn and a house with oneapartment, that I may be free of all perturbations, that I may be sereneand docile to what the mind shall speak, and girt and road-ready for thelowest mission of knowledge or good will, is frugality for gods andheroes. 

Like many other boys P. T. Barnum picked up pennies driving oxen for hisfather, but unlike many other boys he would invest these earnings inknick-knacks which he would sell to others on every holiday, thusincreasing his pennies to dollars. 

The eccentric John Randolph once sprang from his seat in the House ofRepresentatives, and exclaimed in his piercing voice, "Mr. Speaker, Ihave found it. " And then, in the stillness which followed this strangeoutburst, he added, "I have found the Philosopher's stone: it is _Pay asyou go_. "

In France, all classes, the men as well as the women, study the economyof cookery and practice it; and there, as many travelers affirm, thepeople live at one-third the expense of Englishmen or Americans. Therethey know how to make savory messes out of remnants that others wouldthrow away. There they cook no more for each day than is required forthat day. With them the art ranks with the fine arts, and a great cookis as much honored and respected as a sculptor or a painter. Theconsequence is, as ex-Secretary McCullough thinks, a French village of1000 inhabitants could be supported luxuriously on the waste of one ofour large American hotels, and he believes that the entire population ofFrance could be supported on the food which is literally wasted in theUnited States. Professor Blot, who resided for some years in the UnitedStates, remarks, pathetically, that here, "where the markets rival thebest markets of Europe, it is really a pity to live as many do live. There are thousands of families in moderately good circumstances whohave never eaten a loaf of really good bread, nor tasted a well-cookedsteak, nor sat down to a properly prepared meal. "

There are many who think that economy consists in saving cheese paringsand candle ends, in cutting off two pence from the laundress' bill, anddoing all sorts of little, mean, dirty things. Economy is not meanness. The misfortune is also that this class of persons let their economyapply only in one direction. They fancy they are so wonderfullyeconomical in saving a half-penny, where they ought to spend two-pence, that they think they can afford to squander in other directions. _Punch_, in speaking of this "one idea" class of people, says, "They arelike a man who bought a penny herring for his family's dinner, and thenhired a coach and four to take it home. " I never knew a man to succeedby practicing this kind of economy. True economy consists in alwaysmaking the income exceed the out-go. Wear the old clothes a littlelonger, if necessary; dispense with the new pair of gloves, live onplainer food if need be. So that under all circumstances, unless someunforeseen accident occurs, there will be a margin in favor of theincome. A penny here and a dollar there placed at interest go onaccumulating, and in this way the desired result is obtained. 

"I wish I could write all across the sky in letters of gold, " says Rev. William Marsh, "the one word, savings bank. "

Boston savings banks have $130, 000, 000 on deposit, mostly saved indriblets. Josiah Quincy used to say that the servant girls built most ofthe palaces on Beacon street. 

"Nature uses a grinding economy, " says Emerson, "working up all that iswasted to-day into to-morrow's creation; not a superfluous grain of sandfor all the ostentation she makes of expense and public works. She flungus out in her plenty, but we cannot shed a hair or a paring of a nailbut instantly she snatches at the shred and appropriates it to hergeneral stock. Last summer's flowers and foliage decayed in autumn onlyto enrich the earth this year for other forms of beauty. Nature willnot even wait for our friends to see us, unless we die at home. Themoment the breath has left the body she begins to take us to pieces, that the parts may be used again for other creations. "

"So apportion your wants that your means may exceed them, " says Bulwer. "With one hundred pounds a year I may need no man's help; I may at leasthave 'my crust of bread and liberty. ' But with £5000 a year I may dreada ring at my bell; I may have my tyrannical master in servants whosewages I cannot pay; my exile may be at the fiat of the firstlong-suffering man who enters a judgment against me; for the flesh thatlies nearest my heart some Shylock may be dusting his scales andwhetting his knife. Every man is needy who spends more than he has; noman is needy who spends less. I may so ill manage, that with £5000 ayear I purchase the worst evils of poverty--terror and shame; I may sowell manage my money, that with £100 a year I purchase the bestblessings of wealth: safety and respect. "

CHAPTER XIX. 

LIVE UPWARD. 

 "Do what thou dost as if the stake were heaven, And this thy last deed ere the judgment day. "

 If you wish to reach the highest begin at the lowest. --PUBLIUS SYRUS. 

 What is a man, If his chief good, and market of his time, Be but to sleep, and feed? A beast, no more. Sure He, that made us with such large discourse, Looking before, and after, gave us not That capability and godlike Reason To rust in us unused. --SHAKESPEARE. 

 Ambition is the spur that makes man struggle with destiny. It is heaven's own incentive to make purpose great and achievement greater. --ANONYMOUS. 

 "Not failure, but low aim, is crime. "

 "Endeavor to be first in thy calling, whatever it may be; neither let anyone go before thee in well doing. "

 O may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence; live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn For miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man's search To vaster issues. --GEORGE ELIOT. 

"Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne and myself have founded empires, " saidNapoleon to Montholon at St. Helena; "but upon what did we rest thecreations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ alone founded hisempire on love, and at this moment millions of men would die for Him. Idie before my time and my body will be given back to worms. Such is thefate of him who has been called the great Napoleon. What an abyssbetween my deep misery and the eternal kingdom of Christ, which isproclaimed, loved and adored, and which is extended over the wholeearth. Call you this dying? Is it not rather living? The death of Christis the death of a God. "

"No true man can live a half life, " says Phillips Brooks, "when he hasgenuinely learned that it is a half life. The other half, the higherhalf, must haunt him. "

"Ideality, " says Horace Mann, "is only the _avant courier_ of the mind;and where that in a healthy and normal state goes I hold it to be aprophecy that realization can follow. "

"If the certainty of future fame bore Milton rejoicing through hisblindness, or cheered Galileo in his dungeon, " writes Bulwer, "whatstronger and holier support shall not be given to him who has lovedmankind as his brothers and devoted his labors to their cause?--who hasnot sought, but relinquished, his own renown?--who has braved thepresent censures of men for their future benefit, and trampled uponglory in the energy of benevolence? Will there not be for him somethingmore powerful than fame to comfort his sufferings and to sustain hishopes?"

"If I live, " wrote Rufus Choate in his diary in September, 1844, "allblockheads which are shaken at certain mental peculiarities shall knowand feel a reasoner, a lawyer and a man of business. "

I have read that none of the humbler races have the muscle by which manturns his eye upward, though I am not anatomist enough to be sure of thefact. 

"Show me a contented slave, " says Burke, "and I will show you a degradedman. "

"They truly are faithful, " says one writer, "who devote their entirelives to amendment. "

General Grant said of the Chinese Wall: "I believe that the laborexpended on this wall could have built every railroad in the UnitedStates, every canal and highway, and most, if not all, our cities. "

"The real benefactors of mankind, " says Emerson, "are the men and womenwho can raise their fellow beings out of the world of corn and money, who make them forget their bank account by interesting them in theirhigher selves; who can raise mere money-getters into the intellectualrealm, where they will cease to measure greatness and happiness bydollars and cents; who can make men forget their stomachs and feast onbeing's banquet. "

"Men are not so much mistaken in desiring to advance themselves, " saidBeecher, "as in judging what will be an advance, and what the rightmethod of obtaining it. An ambition which has conscience in it willalways be a laborious and faithful engineer, and will build the road andbridge the chasms between itself and eminent success by the mostfaithful and minute performances of duty. The liberty to go higher thanwe are is given only when we have fulfilled amply the duty of ourpresent sphere. Thus men are to rise upon their performances and notupon their discontent. And this is the secret and golden meaning of thecommand to be _content_ in whatever sphere we are placed. It is not tobe the content of indifference, of indolence, of unambitious stupidity, but the content of industrious fidelity. When men are building thefoundations of vast structures they must needs labor far below thesurface, and in disagreeable conditions. But every course of stone whichthey lay raises them higher; and at length, when they reach the surface, they have laid such solid work under them that they need not fear now tocarry up their walls, through towering stories, till they overlook thewhole neighborhood. A man proves himself fit to go higher who shows thathe is faithful where he is. A man that will not do well in his presentplace, because he longs to be higher, is fit neither to be where he isnor yet above it; he is already too high and should be put lower. "

Do that which is assigned thee and thou canst not hope too much, or daretoo much. What a man does, that he has. In himself is his might. Don'twaste life on doubts and fears. Spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the performance of this hour's duties will be the bestpreparation for the hours or ages that follow it. 

Tradition says that when Solomon received the gift of an emerald vasefrom the Queen of Sheba he filled it with an elixir which he only knewhow to prepare, one drop of which would prolong life indefinitely. Adying criminal begged for a drop of the precious fluid, but Solomonrefused to prolong a wicked life. When good men asked for it they wererefused, or failed to obtain it when promised, as the king would forgetor prefer not to open the vase to get but a single drop. When at lastthe king became ill, and bade his servants bring the vase, he found thatthe contents had all evaporated. So it is often with our hope, ourfaith, our ambition, our aspiration. 

A man cannot aspire if he looks down. God has not created us withaspirations and longings for heights to which we cannot climb. Liveupward. The unattained still beckons us toward the summit of life'smountains, into the atmosphere where great souls live and breathe andhave their being. Even hope is but a promise of the possibility of itsown fulfillment. Life should be lived in earnest. It is no idle game, nofarce to amuse and be forgotten. It is a stern reality, fuller of dutiesthan the sky of stars. You cannot have too much of that yearning whichwe call aspiration, for, even though you do not attain your ideal, theefforts you make will bring nothing but blessing; while he who fails ofattaining mere worldly goals is too often eaten up with the canker-wormof disappointed ambition. To all will come a time when the love of glorywill be seen to be but a splendid delusion, riches empty, rank vain, power dependent, and all outward advantages without inward peace a meremockery of wretchedness. The wisest men have taken care to uprootselfish ambition from their breasts. Shakespeare considered it so near avice as to need extenuating circumstances to make it a virtue. 

Who has not noticed the power of love in an awkward, crabbed, shiftless, lazy man? He becomes gentle, chaste in language, energetic. Love bringsout the poetry in him. It is only an idea, a sentiment, and yet whatmagic it has wrought. Nothing we can see has touched the man, yet he isentirely transformed. 

Not less does ambition completely transform a human being, for a womanthirsting for fame can work where a man equally resolute would faint. He despises ease and sloth, welcomes toil and hardship, and shakes evenkingdoms to gratify his master passion. Mere ambition has impelled manya man to a life of eminence and usefulness; its higher manifestation, aspiration, has led him beyond the stars. If the aim be right the lifein its details cannot be far wrong. Your heart must inspire what yourhands execute, or the work will be poorly done. The hand cannot reachhigher than does the heart. 

But do not strive to reach impossible goals. It is wholly in yourpower to develop yourself, but not necessarily so to make yourself aking. How many Presidents of the United States or Prime Ministers ofEngland are chosen within the working lifetime of a man? What if athousand young men resolve to become President or Prime Minister? Whilesuch prizes are within your reach, remember that your will must betremendous and your qualifications of the highest order, or you cannothope to secure them. Too many are deluded by ambition beyond their powerof attainment, or tortured by aspirations totally disproportionate totheir capacity for execution. You may, indeed, confidently hope tobecome eminent in usefulness and power, but only as you build upon abroad foundation of self-culture; while, as a rule, specialists inambition as in science are apt to become narrow and one-sided. Darwinwas very fond of poetry and music when young, but after devoting hislife to science, he was surprised to find Shakespeare tedious. He saidthat, if he were to live his life again, he would read poetry and hearmusic every day, so as not to lose the power of appreciating suchthings. 

God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not the choice. You_must_ take it. The only choice is _how_. 

"When I found I was black, " said Dumas, "I resolved to live as if I werewhite, and so force men to look below my skin. "

In the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society is aprospectus used by Longfellow in canvassing, on one of the blank leavesof which are the skeleton stanzas of "Excelsior, " which he was evidentlyevolving as he trudged from house to house. 

"Disregarding the honors that most men value and looking to the truth, "said Plato, "I shall endeavor in reality to live as virtuously as I can;and, when I die, to die so. And I invite all other men to the utmost ofmy power; and you, too, I invite to this contest, which, I affirm, surpasses all contests here. "

"Did you ever hear of a man who had striven all his life faithfully andsingly toward an object, and in no measure obtained it?" asked Thoreau. "If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated? Did ever a man tryheroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was noadvantage in them, --that it was a vain endeavor?"

"O if the stone can only have some vision of the temple of which it isto be a part forever, " exclaimed Phillips Brooks, "what patience mustfill it as it feels the blows of the hammer, and knows that success forit is simply to let itself be wrought into what shape the master wills. "

Man never reaches heights above his habitual thought. It is not enoughnow and then to mount on wings of ecstasy into the infinite. We musthabitually dwell there. The great man is he who abides easily on heightsto which others rise occasionally and with difficulty. Don't let themaxims of a low prudence daily dinned into your ears lower the tone ofyour high ambition or check your aspirations. Hope lifts us step by stepup the mysterious ladder, the top of which no eye hath ever seen. Thoughwe do not find what hope promised, yet we are stronger for the climbing, and we get a broader outlook upon life which repays the effort. Indeed, if we do not follow where hope beckons, we gradually slide down theladder in despair. Strive ever to be at the top of your condition. Ahigh standard is absolutely necessary. 

CHAPTER XX. 

"SAND. "

 I shall show the cinders of my spirits Through the ashes of my chance. --SHAKESPEARE. 

 Perseverance is a virtue That wins each god-like act, and plucks success E'en from the spear-proof crest of rugged danger. --WILLIAM HARVARD. 

 Never say "Fail" again. --RICHELIEU. 

 It is the one neck nearer that wins the race and shows the blood; the one pull more of the oar that proves the "beefiness of the fellow, " as Oxford men say; it is the one march more that wins the campaign; the five minutes' more persistent courage that wins the fight. Though your force be less than another's, you equal and out-master your opponent if you continue it longer and concentrate it more. --SMILES. 

 "I know no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereign mind as that tenacity of purpose which, through all changes of companions, or parties, or fortunes, changes never, bates no jot of heart or hope, but wearies out opposition and arrives at its port. "

"Well done, Tommy Brooks!" exclaimed his teacher in pleased surprisewhen the dunce of the school spoke his piece without omitting a singleword. The other boys had laughed when he rose, for they expected a badfailure. But when the rest of the class had tried, the teacher saidTommy had done the best of all, and gave him the prize. 

"And now tell me, " said she, "how you learned the poem so well. "

"Please, ma'am, it was the snail on the wall that taught me how to doit, " said Tommy. At this the other pupils laughed aloud, but the teachersaid: "You need not laugh, boys, for we may learn much from such thingsas snails. How did the snail teach you, Tommy?"

"I saw it crawl up the wall little by little, " replied the boy. "It didnot stop nor turn back, but went on, and on; and I thought I would dothe same with the poem. So I learned it little by little, and did notgive up. By the time the snail reached the top of the wall, I hadlearned the whole poem. "

"I may here impart the secret of what is called good and bad luck, " saidAddison. "There are men who, supposing Providence to have an implacablespite against them, bemoan in the poverty of old age the misfortunes oftheir lives. Luck forever runs against them, and for others. One with agood profession lost his luck in the river, where he idled away his timea-fishing. Another with a good trade perpetually burnt up his luck byhis hot temper, which provoked all his employes to leave him. Anotherwith a lucrative business lost his luck by amazing diligence ateverything but his own business. Another who steadily followed histrade, as steadily followed the bottle. Another who was honest andconstant to his work, erred by his perpetual misjudgment, --he lackeddiscretion. Hundreds lose their luck by indulging sanguine expectations, by trusting fraudulent men, and by dishonest gains. A man never has goodluck who has a bad wife. I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings and strictly honest, who complainedof his bad luck. A good character, good habits, and iron industry areimpregnable to the assaults of the ill luck that fools are dreaming of. But when I see a tatterdemalion creeping out of a grocery late in theforenoon with his hands stuck into his pockets, the rim of his hatturned up, and the crown knocked in, I know he has had bad luck, --forthe worst of all luck is to be a sluggard, a knave, or a tippler. "

"You have a difficult subject, " said Anthony Trollope at Niagara Falls, to an artist who had attempted to draw the spray of the waters. "Allsubjects are difficult, " was the reply, "to a man who desires to dowell. " "But yours, I fear, is impossible, " said Trollope. "You have noright to say so till I have finished my picture, " protested the artist. 

"Tell Louisa to stick to her teaching; she can never succeed as awriter. " When her father delivered the rejected manuscript of a storysent to James T. Fields, editor of the _Atlantic Monthly_, with theabove message, Miss Alcott said, "Tell him I _will_ succeed as a writer, and some day I shall write for the _Atlantic_. " Not long after she sentan article to the _Atlantic_ and received a check for $50. With themoney she said she bought "a second hand carpet for the parlor, a bonnetfor her sister, shoes and stockings for herself. " Her father was callingupon Longfellow some time after this, when Longfellow took the_Atlantic_, and said, "I want to read to you Emerson's fine poem uponThoreau's flute. " Mr. Alcott interrupted him with delight and said, "Mydaughter Louisa wrote that. "

"Men talk as if victory were something fortunate, " says Emerson. "_Workis victory. _ Wherever work is done victory is obtained. _There is nochance and no blanks. _ You want but one verdict; if you have your own, you are secure of the rest. But if witnesses are wanted, witnesses arenear. "

"Young gentlemen, " said Francis Wayland, "remember that nothing canstand day's work. "

Alexander the Great exclaimed to his soldiers, disaffected after a longcampaign, "Go home and tell them that you left Alexander to conquer theworld alone. "

"We discount only our own bills, and not those of private persons, " saidthe cashier of the Bank of England, when a large bill was offered drawnby Anselm Rothschild of Frankfort, on Nathan Rothschild of London. "Private persons!" exclaimed Nathan, when told of the cashier's remark;"I will make these gentlemen see what sort of private persons we are. "Three weeks later he presented a five-pound note at the bank at theopening of the office. The teller counted out five sovereigns, lookingsurprised that Baron Rothschild should have troubled himself about sucha trifle. The baron examined the coins one by one, weighing them in thebalance, as he said "the law gave him the right to do, " put them into alittle canvas bag, and offered a second, then a third, fourth, fiftieth, thousandth note. When a bag was full he handed it to a clerk in waiting, and proceeded to fill another. In seven hours he had changed £21, 000, and, with nine employes of his house similarly engaged, had occupied thetellers so busily in changing $1, 050, 000 worth of notes that no one elsecould receive attention. The bankers laughed, but the next morningRothschild appeared with his nine clerks and several drays to carry awaythe gold, remarking, "These gentlemen refuse to pay my bills; I havesworn not to keep theirs. They can pay at their leisure, only I notifythem that I have enough to employ them for two months. " The smiles fadedfrom the features of the bank officials, as they thought of a draft of$55, 000, 000 in gold which they did not hold. Next morning notice wasgiven in the newspapers that the Bank of England would pay Rothschild'sbills as well as its own. 

"Well, " said Barnum to a friend in 1841, "I am going to buy the AmericanMuseum. " "Buy it!" exclaimed the astonished friend, who knew that theshowman had not a dollar; "what do you intend buying it with?" "Brass, "was the prompt reply, "for silver and gold have I none. "

Every one interested in public entertainments in New York knew Barnum, and knew the condition of his pocket; but Francis Olmstead, who ownedthe Museum building, consulted numerous references all telling of "agood showman, who would do as he agreed, " and accepted a proposition togive security for the purchaser. Mr. Olmstead was to appoint amoney-taker at the door, and credit Barnum toward the purchase with allabove expenses and an allowance of fifty dollars per month to supporthis wife and three children. Mrs. Barnum gladly assented to thearrangement, and offered, if need be, to cut down the household expensesto a little more than a dollar a day. Some six months later Mr. Olmsteadhappened to enter the ticket office at noon, and found Barnum eating fordinner a few slices of bread and some corned beef. "Is this the way youeat your dinner?" he asked. 

"I have not eaten a warm dinner since I bought the Museum, except on theSabbath; and I intend never to eat another until I get out of debt. ""Ah! you are safe, and will pay for the Museum before the year is out, "said Mr. Olmstead, slapping the young man approvingly on the shoulder. He was right, for in less than a year Barnum had paid every cent out ofthe profits of the establishment. 

A noted philosopher said: "The favors of fortune are like steep rocks;only eagles and creeping things mount to the summit. " Lord Campbell, whobecame Chief Justice and Lord Chancellor of England and amassed a largefortune, began life as a drudge in a printing office. A littleobservation shows us that, as a rule, the men who accomplish the most inthe world are the most useful, and sensible members of society, the menwho are depended upon most in emergencies, the men of backbone andstamina, the bone and sinew of their communities; the men who can alwaysbe relied upon, who are healthiest and happiest, are, as a rule, ofordinary mental calibre and medium capacity. But with persistent anduntiring industry, these are they, after all, who carry the burdens andreap the prizes of life. It is the men and women who keep everlastinglyat it, who do not believe themselves geniuses, but who know that if theyever accomplish anything great, they must do it by common drudgery andpersistent industry and with an unwavering aim in one pursuit. Those whobelieve themselves geniuses are apt to scatter their efforts and thusfritter away their great energies without accomplishing anything inproportion to their high promise. Often the men who promise the most paythe least. 

Mrs. Frank Leslie often refers to the time she lived in her carpetlessattic while striving to pay her husband's obligations. She has foughther way successfully through nine lawsuits, and has paid the entiredebt. She manages her ten publications entirely herself, signs allchecks and money-orders, makes all contracts, looks over all proofs, andapproves the make-up of everything before it goes to press. She hasdeveloped great business ability, which no one dreamed she possessed. 

A little boy was asked how he learned to skate. "Oh, by getting up everytime I fell down, " he replied. 

The boy Thorwaldsen, whose father died in the poorhouse, and whoseeducation was so scanty that he had to write his letters over many timesbefore they could be posted, by his indomitable perseverance, tenacityand grit, fascinated the world with the genius which neither hisdiscouraging father, poverty, nor hardship could repress. 

"It is all very well, " said Charles J. Fox, "to tell me that a youngman has distinguished himself by a brilliant first speech. He may go on, or he may be satisfied with his first triumph; but show me a young manwho has not succeeded at first, and nevertheless has gone on, and I willback that young man to do better than most of those who have succeededat the first trial. "

It was the last three days of the first voyage of Columbus that told. All his years of struggle and study would have availed nothing if he hadyielded to the mutiny. It was all in those three days. But what days!

"Often defeated in battle, " said Macaulay of Alexander the Great, "hewas always successful in war. " He might have said the same ofWashington, and, with appropriate changes, of all who win great triumphsof any kind. 

One of the greatest preachers of modern times, Lacordaire, failed againand again. Everybody said he would never make a preacher, but he wasdetermined to succeed, and in two years from his humiliating failures hewas preaching in Notre Dame to immense congregations. 

Orange Judd was a remarkable example of success through grit. He earnedcorn by working for farmers, carried it on his back to mill, broughtback the meal to his room, cooked it himself, milked cows for his pintof milk per day, and lived on mush and milk for months together. Heworked his way through Wesleyan University, and took a three years'post-graduate course at Yale. 

Oh, the triumphs of this indomitable spirit of the conqueror! This itwas that enabled Franklin to dine on a small loaf in the printing-officewith a book in his hand. It helped Locke to live on bread and water in aDutch garret. It enabled Gideon Lee to go barefoot in the snow, halfstarved and thinly clad. It sustained Lincoln and Garfield on their hardjourneys from the log cabin to the White House. 

The very reputation of being strong-willed, plucky, and indefatigable isof priceless value. It often cowes enemies and dispels at the startopposition to one's undertakings which would otherwise be formidable. 

"When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, tillit seems as if you could not hold on a minute longer, " said HarrietBeecher Stowe, "never give up then, for that's just the place and timethat the tide'll turn. "

"Never despair, " says Burke, "but if you do, work on in despair. "

Once when Marshal Ney was going into battle, looking down at his kneeswhich were smiting together, he said, "You may well shake; you wouldshake worse yet if you knew where I am going to take you. "

"Go it, William!" an old boxer was overheard saying to himself in themidst of a fight; "at him again!--never say 'die'!"

A striking incident is related of the early experience of George Law, who, in his day, was one of the most conspicuous financiers andcapitalists of New York City. When he was a young man he went to NewYork, poor and friendless. One day he was walking along the streets, hungry, not knowing where his next meal would come from, and passed anew building in course of erection. Through some accident one of the hodcarriers fell from the structure and dropped dead at his feet. YoungLaw, in his desperation, applied for the job to take the dead man'splace, and the place was given him. He went to work, and this was howone of the wealthiest and shrewdest New York business men got his start. 

See young Disraeli, sprung from a hated and persecuted race; withoutopportunity, pushing his way up through the middle classes, up throughthe upper classes, until he stands self-poised upon the topmost round ofpolitical and social power. Scoffed, ridiculed, rebuffed, hissed fromthe House of Commons, he simply says, "The time will come when you willhear me. " The time did come, and the boy with no chance swayed thesceptre of England for a quarter of a century. 

If impossibilities ever exist, popularly speaking, they ought to havebeen found somewhere between the birth and the death of Kitto, that deafpauper and master of Oriental learning. But Kitto did not find themthere. In the presence of his decision and imperial energy they meltedaway. Kitto begged his father to take him out of the poorhouse, even ifhe had to subsist like the Hottentots. He told him that he would sellhis books and pawn his handkerchief, by which he thought he could raiseabout twelve shillings. He said he could live upon blackberries, nutsand field turnips, and was willing to sleep on a hayrick. Here was realgrit. What were impossibilities to such a resolute will? Patrick Henryvoiced that decision which characterized the great men of the Revolutionwhen he said, "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased atthe price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know notwhat course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give medeath!"

Look at Garrison reading this advertisement in a Southern paper: "Fivethousand dollars will be paid for the head of W. L. Garrison by theGovernor of Georgia. " Behold him again; a broadcloth mob is leading himthrough the streets of Boston by a rope. He is hurried to jail. See himreturn calmly and unflinchingly to his work, beginning at the point atwhich he was interrupted. Note this heading in the _Liberator_, thetype of which he set himself in an attic on State Street, in Boston: "Iam in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will notretreat a single inch, and I will be heard. " Was Garrison heard? Ask arace set free largely by his efforts. Even the gallows erected in frontof his own door did not daunt him. He held the ear of an unwilling worldwith that burning word "freedom, " which was destined never to cease itsvibrations until it had breathed its sweet secret to the last slave. 

At a time when abolitionists were dangerously unpopular, a crowd ofbrawny Cape Cod fishermen had made such riotous demonstrations that allthe speakers announced, except Stephen Foster and Lucy Stone, had fledfrom an open-air platform. "You had better run, Stephen, " said she;"they are coming. " "But who will take care of you?" asked Foster. "Thisgentleman will take care of me, " she replied, calmly laying her handwithin the arm of a burly rioter with a club, who had just sprung uponthe platform. "Wh--what did you say?" stammered the astonished rowdy, ashe looked at the little woman; "yes, I'll take care of you, and no oneshall touch a hair of your head. " With this he forced a way for herthrough the crowd, and, at her earnest request, placed her upon a stumpand stood guard with his club while she delivered an address soeffective that the audience offered no further violence, and even tookup a collection of twenty dollars to repay Mr. Foster for the damage hisclothes had received when the riot was at its height. 

"Luck is ever waiting for something to turn up, " says Cobden; "labor, with keen eyes and strong will, will turn up something. Luck lies inbed, and wishes the postman would bring him the news of a legacy; laborturns out at six o'clock, and with busy pen or ringing hammer lays thefoundation of a competence. Luck whines; labor whistles. Luck relies onchance; labor, on character. "

There is no luck, for all practical purposes, to him who is notstriving, and whose senses are not all eagerly attent. What are calledaccidental discoveries are almost invariably made by those who arelooking for something. A man incurs about as much risk of being struckby lightning as by accidental luck. There is, perhaps, an element ofluck in the amount of success which crowns the efforts of different men;but even here it will usually be found that the sagacity with which theefforts are directed and the energy with which they are prosecutedmeasure pretty accurately the luck contained in the results achieved. Apparent exceptions will be found to relate almost wholly to singleundertakings, while in the long run the rule will hold good. Twopearl-divers, equally expert, dive together and work with equal energy. One brings up a pearl, while the other returns empty-handed. But letboth persevere and at the end of five, ten or twenty years it will befound that they succeeded almost in exact proportion to their skill andindustry. 

Lincoln, being asked by an anxious visitor what he would do after threeor four years if the rebellion was not subdued, replied: "Oh, there isno alternative but to keep pegging away. "

"It is in me and it shall come out, " said Sheridan, when told that hewould never make an orator, as he had failed in his first speech inParliament. He became known as one of the foremost orators of his day. 

It takes great courage to fight a lost cause when there is no hope evenof victory. To contest every inch of ground with as much persistency andenthusiasm as if we were assured of victory; this is true courage. 

The world admires the man who never flinches from unexpecteddifficulties, who calmly, patiently, and courageously grapples with hisfate; who dies, if need be, at his post. 

President Chadbourne put grit in place of his lost lung, and workedthirty-five years after his funeral had been planned. 

Henry Fawcett put grit in place of eyesight, and became the greatestPostmaster-General England ever had. 

Prescott also put grit in place of eyesight, and became one ofAmerica's greatest historians. Francis Parkman put grit in place ofhealth and eyesight, and became the greatest historian of America in hisline. Thousands of men have put grit in place of health, eyes, ears, hands, legs, and yet have achieved marvelous success. Indeed, most ofthe great things of the world have been accomplished by grit and pluck. You cannot keep a man down who has these qualities. He will makestepping-stones out of his stumbling-blocks, and lift himself tosuccess. 

Grit and pluck are not always exhibited only by poor boys who have nochance, for there are many notable examples of pluck, persistence andreal grit among youth in good circumstances, who never have to fighttheir way to their own loaf. Mr. Mifflin, who has recently become thehead of the celebrated publishing firm of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , is anotable example of persistency, push and grit. After graduating atHarvard and traveling abroad, he was determined, although not obliged towork for a living, to get a position at the Riverside Press inCambridge. He called upon the late Mr. Houghton and asked him for asituation. Mr. Houghton told him that he had no opening, and that, evenif he had, he did not believe that a graduate from Harvard who had moneyand who had traveled abroad would ever be willing to begin at the bottomand do the necessary drudgery, for boy's pay. Mr. Mifflin protestedthat he was not afraid of hard work, and that he was willing to doanything and take any sort of a position, if he could only learn thebusiness. But Mr. Houghton would not give him any encouragement. Againand again Mr. Mifflin came to the Riverside Press, and pressed his suit, but to no purpose. Mr. Mifflin persuaded his father to intercede forhim, but Mr. Houghton succeeded in convincing him that it would be veryunwise for his son to attempt it. But young Mifflin was determined notto give up. Finally, Mr. Houghton, out of admiration for his persistenceand pluck, made a place for him, which had been occupied by a boy, for$5 a week. 

Young Mifflin took hold of the work with such earnestness, and showed somuch pluck and determination, that Mr. Houghton soon called him into theoffice and raised his pay to $9 a week from the time he began. Althoughthe young man lived in Boston, he was always at the Riverside Press inCambridge early in the morning, and would frequently remain after allthe others had gone. Mr. Houghton happened to go in late one night, after everybody had gone, as he supposed, and was surprised to find Mr. Mifflin there, taking one of the presses apart. Of course such a youngman would be advanced. These are the boys who become the heads offirms. 

It is victory after victory with the soldier, lesson after lesson withthe scholar, blow after blow with the laborer, crop after crop with thefarmer, picture after picture with the painter, and mile after mile withthe traveler, that secures what all so much desire--SUCCESS. 

Stick to the thing and carry it through. Believe you were made for theplace you fill, and that no one else can fill it as well. Put forth yourwhole energies. Be awake, electrify yourself; go forth to the task. Onlyonce learn to carry a thing through in all its completeness andproportion, and you will become a hero. You will think better ofyourself; others will think better of you. The world in its very heartadmires the stern, determined doer. 

CHAPTER XXI. 

ABOVE RUBIES. 

 The best way to settle the quarrel between capital and labor is by allopathic doses of Peter-Cooperism. --TALMAGE. 

 In the sublimest flights of the soul, rectitude is never surmounted, love is never outgrown. --EMERSON. 

 "One ruddy drop of manly blood the surging sea outweighs. "

 Virtue alone out-builds the pyramids: Her monuments shall last when Egypt's fall. --YOUNG. 

 He believed that he was born, not for himself, but for the whole world. --LUCAN. 

 Wherever man goes to dwell, his character goes with him. --AFRICAN PROVERB. 

 The spirit of a single mind Makes that of multitudes take one direction, As roll the waters to the breathing wind. --BYRON. 

"No, say what you have to say in her presence, too, " said King Cleomenesof Sparta, when his visitor Anistagoras asked him to send away hislittle daughter Gorgo, ten years old, knowing how much harder it is topersuade a man to do wrong when his child is at his side. So Gorgo satat her father's feet, and listened while the stranger offered more andmore money if Cleomenes would aid him to become king in a neighboringcountry. She did not understand the matter, but when she saw her fatherlook troubled and hesitate, she took hold of his hand and said, "Papa, come away--come, or this strange man will make you do wrong. " The kingwent away with the child, and saved himself and his country fromdishonor. Character is power, even in a child. When grown to womanhood, Gorgo was married to the hero Leonidas. One day a messenger brought atablet sent by a friend who was a prisoner in Persia. But the closestscrutiny failed to reveal a single word or line on the white waxensurface, and the king and all his noblemen concluded that it was sent asa jest. "Let me take it, " said Queen Gorgo; and, after looking it allover, she exclaimed, "There must be some writing underneath the wax!"They scraped away the wax and found a warning to Leonidas from theGrecian prisoner, saying that Xerxes was coming with his immense host toconquer all Greece. Acting on this warning, Leonidas and the other kingsassembled their armies and checked the mighty host of Xerxes, which issaid to have shaken the earth as it marched. 

"I fear John Knox's prayers more than an army of ten thousand men, " saidMary, Queen of Scotland. 

"The man behind the sermon, " said William M. Evarts, "is the secret ofJohn Hall's power. " In fact if there is not a man with a characterbehind it nothing about it is of the slightest consequence. 

Thackeray says, "Nature has written a letter of credit upon some men'sfaces which is honored wherever presented. You can not help trustingsuch men; their very presence gives confidence. There is a 'promise topay' in their very faces which gives confidence, and you prefer it toanother man's indorsement. " _Character is credit. _

In the great monetary panic of 1857, a meeting was called of the variousbank presidents of New York City. When asked what percentage of speciehad been drawn during the day, some replied fifty per cent. , some evenas high as seventy-five per cent. , but Moses Taylor of the City Banksaid: "We had in the bank this morning, $400, 000; this evening, $470, 000. " While other banks were badly "run, " the confidence in theCity Bank under Mr. Taylor's management was such that people haddeposited in that institution what they had drawn from other banks. Character gives confidence. 

"There is no such thing as a small country, " said Victor Hugo. "Thegreatness of a people is no more affected by the number of itsinhabitants than the greatness of an individual is measured by hisheight. "

"It is the nature of party in England, " said John Russell, "to ask theassistance of men of genius, but to follow the guidance of men ofcharacter. "

"A handful of good life, " says George Herbert, "is worth a bushel oflearning. "

"I have read, " Emerson says, "that they who listened to Lord Chathamfelt that there was something finer in the man than anything which hesaid. " It has been complained of Carlyle that when he has told all hisfacts about Mirabeau they do not justify his estimate of the latter'sgenius. The Gracchi, Agis, Cleomenes, and others of Plutarch's heroes donot in the record of facts equal their own fame. Sir Philip Sidney andSir Walter Raleigh are men of great figure and of few deeds. We cannotfind the smallest part of the personal weight of Washington in thenarrative of his exploits. The authority of the name of Schiller is toogreat for his books. This inequality of the reputation to the works orthe anecdotes is not accounted for by saying that the reverberation islonger than the thunder-clap; but something resided in these men whichbegot an expectation that outran all their performance. The largest partof their power was latent. This is that which we call character, --areserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. Whatothers effect by talent or eloquence, the man of character accomplishesby some magnetism. "Half his strength he puts not forth. " His victoriesare by demonstration of superiority, and not by crossing bayonets. Heconquers, because his arrival alters the face of affairs. "O Iole! howdidst thou know that Hercules was a god?" "Because, " answered Iole, "Iwas content the moment my eyes fell on him. When I beheld Theseus, Idesired that I might see him offer battle, or at least drive his horsesin the chariot-race; but Hercules did not wait for a contest; heconquered whether he stood, or walked, or sat, or whatever else he did. "

"Show me, " said Omar the Caliph to Amru the warrior, "the sword withwhich you have fought so many battles and slain so many infidels. " "Ah, "replied Amru, "the sword without the arm of the master is no sharper norheavier than the sword of Farezdak the poet. " So one hundred and fiftypounds of flesh and blood without character is of no great value. 

"No man throws away his vote, " says Francis Willard, "when he places itin the ballot-box with his conviction behind it. The party which electedLincoln in 1860 polled only seven thousand votes in 1840. Revolutionsnever go backward, and the fanaticisms of to-day are the victories ofto-morrow. "

"O sir, we are beaten, " exclaimed the general in command of Sheridan'sarmy, retreating before the victorious Early. "No, sir, " replied theindignant Sheridan; "you are beaten, but this army is not beaten. "Drawing his sword, he waved it above his head, and pointed it at thepursuing host, while his clarion voice rose above the horrid din in acommand to charge once more. The lines paused, turned, --

 "And with the ocean's mighty swing, When heaving to the tempest's wing, They hurled them on the foe;"

and the Confederate army was wildly routed. 

When war with France seemed imminent, in 1798, President Adams wrote toGeorge Washington, then a private citizen in retirement at Mount Vernon:"We must have your name, if you will permit us to use it; there will bemore efficacy in it than in many an army. " Character is power. 

When Pope Paul IV. Heard of the death of Calvin he exclaimed with asigh, "Ah, the strength of that proud heretic lay in--riches? No!Honors? No! But nothing could move him from his course. Holy Virgin!With two such servants, our Church would soon be mistress of bothworlds. "

Eighteen hundred years ago, when night closed over the city of Pompeii, a lady sat in her house nursing her son of ten years of age. The childhad been ill for some days; his form was wasted, his little limbs wereshrunk; and we may imagine with what infinite anxiety she watched everymotion of the helpless one, whose existence was so dear. What did takeplace we know with an exactness very remarkable. That distant mountainwhich reared its awful head on the shore of the bay, Vesuvius, wastroubled that same night with an eruption, and threw into the air suchclouds of pumice-stones that the streets and squares of Pompeii becamefilled, and gradually the stones grew higher and higher, until theyreached the level of the windows. There was no chance of escape then bythe doors; and those who attempted to get away stepped out of theirfirst floor windows and rushed over the sulphurous stones--a shortdistance only, for they were quickly overpowered by the poisonous vaporsand fell dead. After the stones there fell ashes, and after ashes hotwater fell in showers, which changed the ashes into clay. Those who ranout of their houses during the fall of stones were utterly consumed, while those who waited until the ashes began to fall perished likewise, but their bodies were preserved by the ashes and water which fell uponthem. The Pompeiian mother we have mentioned opened the window of herhouse when she thought the fall of stones was over, and with the childin her arms took a few hurried steps forward, when, overpowered by thesulphur, she fell forward, at which moment the shower of ashes began tofall, and quickly buried mother and child. The hot water afterwardchanged into a mould; the ashes and the sun baked the fatal clay to sucha degree of hardness that it has endured to the present day. A shorttime ago the spot where mother and child lay was found, liquidplaster-of-Paris was poured into the mould formed by the bodies, andthen the mould was broken up, leaving the plaster-cast whole. Thus onetouching incident in the terrible tragedy of eighteen centuries ago hasbeen preserved for the admiration and respect of posterity. _The armsand legs of the child showed a contraction and emaciation which couldonly result from illness. _ Of the mother only the right arm waspreserved; she fell upon the ashes, and the remaining portion of herbody was consumed. _But the right hand still clasped the legs of thechild_; on her arm were two gold bracelets, and on her fingers were twogold rings--one set with an emerald, the other with a cut amethyst. Thistouching illustration of _a mother's love_ now rests in the museum ofthe celebrated city. 

"I was sitting with Grant once, " says General Fisk, "when amajor-general entered, dressed in the uniform of his rank, who said:'Boys, I have a good story to tell you. I believe there are no ladiespresent. ' Grant said, 'No, but there are gentlemen present. '"

Mr. George W. Childs, in referring to this trait, said:

"Another great trait of his character was his purity in every way. Inever heard him express or make an indelicate allusion in any way orshape. There is nothing I ever heard that man say that could not berepeated in the presence of women. "

The writer has heard of several incidents illustrating his answer toimpure stories. On one occasion, when Grant formed one of a dinner-partyof American gentlemen in a foreign city, conversation drifted intoreferences to questionable affairs, when he suddenly rose and said, "Gentlemen, please excuse me; I will retire. "

When Attila, flushed with conquest, appeared with his barbarian hordebefore the gates of Rome in 452, Pope Leo alone of all the people daredgo forth and try to turn his wrath aside. A single magistrate followedhim. The Huns were awed by the fearless majesty of the unarmed old man, and led him before their chief, whose respect was so great that heagreed not to enter the city, provided a tribute should be paid to him. 

Wellington said that Napoleon's presence in the French army wasequivalent to forty thousand additional soldiers, and Richter said ofthe invincible Luther, "His words were half battles. "

"I know no great men, " says Voltaire, "except those who have renderedgreat services to the human race. " Men are measured by what they do;not by what they seem or possess. 

Francis Horner, of England, was a man of whom Sydney Smith said, that"the ten commandments were stamped upon his forehead. " The valuable andpeculiar light in which Horner's history is calculated to inspire everyright-minded youth is this: he died at the age of thirty-eight, possessed of greater influence than any other private man, and admired, beloved, trusted, and deplored by all except the heartless and the base. No greater homage was ever paid in Parliament to any deceased member. How was this attained? By rank? He was the son of an Edinburgh merchant. By wealth? Neither he nor any of his relatives ever had a superfluoussixpence. By office? He held but one; and that for only a few years, ofno influence, and with very little pay. By talents? His were notsplendid, and he had no genius. Cautious and slow, his only ambition wasto be right. By eloquence? He spoke in calm, good taste, without any ofthe oratory that either terrifies or seduces. By any fascination ofmanner? His was only correct and agreeable. By what was it, then? Merelyby sense, industry, good principles and a good heart, qualities which nowell constituted mind need ever despair of attaining. It was the forceof his character that raised him; and this character was not impressedon him by nature, but formed, out of no peculiarly fine elements, byhimself. There were many in the House of Commons of far greater abilityand eloquence. But no one surpassed him in the combination of anadequate portion of these with moral worth. Horner was born to show whatmoderate powers, unaided by anything whatever except culture andgoodness, may achieve, even when these powers are displayed amidst thecompetition and jealousies of public life. 

A hundred years hence what difference will it make whether you were richor poor, a peer or a peasant? But what difference may it not makewhether you did what was right or what was wrong?

At a large dinner-party given by Lord Stratford after the Crimean War, it was proposed that every one should write on a slip of paper the namewhich appeared most likely to descend to posterity with renown. When thepapers were opened everyone of them contained the name of FlorenceNightingale. 

Professor Blackie, of the University of Edinburgh, said to a class ofyoung men: "Money is not needful; power is not needful; liberty is notneedful; even health is not the one thing needful; but character aloneis that which can truly save us, and if we are not saved in this sense, we certainly must be damned. " It has been said that "when poverty isyour inheritance, virtue must be your capital. "

"Hence it was, " said Franklin, speaking of the influence of his knownintegrity of character, "that I had so much weight with myfellow-citizens. I was but a bad speaker, never eloquent, subject tomuch hesitation in my choice of words, hardly correct in language, andyet I generally carried my point. "

When a man's character is gone, all is gone. All peace of mind, allcomplacency in himself is fled forever. He despises himself. He isdespised by his fellow-men. Within is shame and remorse; without neglectand reproach. He is of necessity a miserable and useless man; he is soeven though he be clothed in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuouslyevery day. It is better to be poor; it is better to be reduced tobeggary; it is better to be cast into prison, or condemned to perpetualslavery, than to be destitute of a good name or endure the pains and theevils of a conscious worthlessness of character. 

The time is soon coming when, by the common consent of mankind, it willbe esteemed more honorable to have been John Pounds, putting new andbeautiful souls into the ragged children of the neighborhood while hemended his father's shoes, than to have sat upon the British throne. Thetime now is when, if Queen Victoria, in one of her magnificentprogresses through her realms, were to meet that more than Americanqueen, Miss Dix, in her "circumnavigation of charity" among the insane, the former should kneel and kiss the hand of the latter; and the rulerover more than a hundred millions of people should pay homage to theangel whom God has sent to the maniac. 

"At your age, " said to a youth an old man who had honorably held manypositions of trust and responsibility, "both position and wealth appearenduring things; but at mine a man sees that nothing lasts butcharacter. "

Several eminent clergymen were discussing the qualities of self-mademen. They each admitted that they belonged to that class, except acertain bishop, who remained silent, and was intensely absorbed in therepast. The host was determined to draw him out, and so, addressing him, said: "All at this table are self-made men, unless the bishop is anexception. " The bishop promptly replied, "I am not made yet, " and thereply contained a profound truth. So long as life lasts, with itsdiscipline of joy or sorrow, its opportunities for good or evil, so longour characters are being shaped and fixed. 

Milton said: "He who would write heroic poems, must make his whole lifean heroic poem. " We are responsible for our thoughts, and unless wecould command them, mental and moral excellence would be impossible. 

Charles Kingsley has well said: "Let any one set his heart to do what isright and nothing else, and it will not be long ere his brow is stampedwith all that goes to make up the heroic expression, with nobleindignation, noble self-restraint, great hopes, great sorrows, perhapseven with the print of the martyr's crown of thorns. "

Said James Martineau: "God insists on having a concurrence between ourpractice and our thoughts. If we proceed to make a contradiction betweenthem, He forthwith begins to abolish it, and if the will will not riseto the reason, the reason must be degraded to the will. "

"When I say, in conducting your understanding, " says Sidney Smith, "loveknowledge with a great love, with a vehement love, with a love co-evalwith life--what do I say but love innocence, love virtue, love purity ofconduct, love that which, if you are rich and great, will vindicate theblind fortune which has made you so, and make them call it justice; lovethat which, if you are poor, will render your poverty respectable, andmake the proudest feel that it is unjust to laugh at the meanness ofyour fortunes; love that which will comfort you, adorn you, and neverquit you--which will open to you the kingdom of thought, and all theboundless regions of conception as an asylum against the cruelty, theinjustice, and the pain that may be your lot in the world--that whichwill make your motives habitually great and honorable, and light up inan instant a thousand noble disdains at the very thought of meanness andof fraud?"

The Arabs express this by a parable that incarnates, as is their wont, the Word in the recital. King Nimrod, say they, one day summoned histhree sons into his presence. He ordered to be set before them threeurns under seal. One of the urns was of gold, another of amber, and thethird of clay. The king bade the eldest of his sons choose among theurns that which appeared to him to contain the treasure of greatestprice. The eldest chose the vase of gold, on which was written the word"Empire. " He opened it and found it full of blood. The second chose theamber vase whereon was written the word "Glory. " He opened it and foundit contained the ashes of the great men who had made a sensation in theworld. The third son took the only remaining vase, the one of clay; hefound it quite empty, but on the bottom the potter had written the word"God. " "Which of these vases weighs the most?" asked the king of thecourtiers. The men of ambition replied it was the vase of gold; thepoets and conquerors, the amber one; the sages that it was the emptyvase, because a single letter of the name God weighs more than theentire globe. We are of the opinion of the sages. We believe thegreatest things are great but in the proportion of divinity theycontain. 

"Although genius always commands admiration, " says Smiles, "charactermost secures respect. The former is more the product of brain-power, thelatter of heart-power; and in the long run it is the heart that rules inlife. Men of genius stand to society in the relation of its intellect, as men of character of its conscience; and while the former are admired, the latter are followed. 

"Commonplace though it may appear, this doing of one's duty embodies thehighest ideal of life and character. There may be nothing heroic aboutit; but the common lot of men is not heroic. And though the abidingsense of duty upholds man in his highest attitudes, it also equallysustains him in the transaction of the ordinary affairs of every-dayexistence. The most influential of all the virtues are those which arethe most in request for daily use. They wear the best and last thelongest. We can always better understand and appreciate a man's realcharacter by the manner in which he conducts himself toward those whoare the most nearly related to him, and by his transaction of theseemingly commonplace details of daily duty, than by his publicexhibition of himself as an author, an orator, or a statesman. Intellectual culture has no necessary relation to purity or excellenceof character. 

"On the contrary, a condition of comparative poverty is compatible withcharacter in its highest form. A man may possess only his industry, hisfrugality, his integrity, and yet stand high in the rank of truemanhood. 

"Character is property. It is the noblest of possessions. It is anestate in the general good-will and respect of men; and they who investin it--though they may not become rich in this world's goods--will findtheir reward in esteem and reputation fairly and honorably won. Withoutprinciples, a man is like a ship without rudder or compass, left todrift hither and thither with every wind that blows. "

What a contrast is afforded by the lives of Bacon and More. Bacon soughtoffice with as much desire as More avoided it; Bacon used as muchsolicitation to obtain it as More endured to accept it, and each, whenin it, was equally true to his character. More was simple, as Bacon wasostentatious. More was as incorruptible as Bacon was venal. More spenthis private fortune in office, and Bacon spent the wages of corruptionthere. Both left office poor in worldly goods; but while More was richin honor and good deeds, Bacon was poor in everything; poor in themammon for which he bartered his integrity; poor in the gawd for whichhe sacrificed his peace; poor in the presence of the worthless; coveredwith shame in the midst of the people; trusting his fame to posterity, of which posterity is only able to say, that the wisest of men wasadviser to the silliest of kings, yet that such a king had a sort ofmajesty when morally compared with the official director of hisconscience. Both More and Bacon served each a great purpose for theworld. More illustrated the beauty of holiness; Bacon expounded theinfinitude of science. Bacon became the prophet of intellect; More, themartyr of conscience. The one pours over our understandings the light ofknowledge; but the other inflames our hearts with the love of virtue. 

All have read of the proud Egyptian king who ordered a colossalstaircase built in his new palace, and was chagrined to find that herequired a ladder to climb from one step to the next. A king's legs areas short as those of a beggar. So, too, a prince's ability to enjoy thepleasures of life is no greater than that of a pauper. 

"All that is valuable in this world is to be had for nothing. Genius, beauty, health, piety, love, are not bought and sold. The richest man onearth would vainly offer a fortune to be qualified to write a verse likeMilton, or to compose a melody like Mozart. You may summon all thephysicians, but they cannot procure for you the sweet, healthful sleepwhich the tired laborer gets without price. Let no man, then, callhimself a proprietor. He owns but the breath as it traverses his lipsand the idea as it flits across his mind; and of that breath he may bedeprived by the sting of a bee, and that idea, perhaps, truly belongs toanother. "

 "We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths: In feelings, not in figures on a dial. We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best; And he whose heart beats quickest lives the longest. "

CHAPTER XXII. 

MORAL SUNSHINE. 

 I have gout, asthma, and seven other maladies, but am otherwise very well. --SIDNEY SMITH. 

 The inborn geniality of some people amounts to genius. --WHIPPLE. 

 This one sits shivering in fortune's smile, Taking his joy with bated, doubtful breath; This other, gnawed by hunger, all the while Laughs in the teeth of death. --T. B. ALDRICH. 

 There is no real life but cheerful life. --ADDISON. 

 Next to the virtue, the fun in this world is what we can least spare. --AGNES STRICKLAND. 

 Joy in one's work is the consummate tool. --PHILLIPS BROOKS. 

 Joy is the mainspring in the whole Of endless Natures calm rotation. Joy moves the dazzling wheels that roll In the great timepiece of Creation. --SCHILLER. 

"He is as stiff as a poker, " said a friend of a man who could never becoaxed or tempted to smile. "Stiff as a poker, " exclaimed another, "whyhe would set an example to a poker. "

Even Christians are not celebrated for entering into the _joy_ of theirLord. 

We are told that "Pascal would not permit himself to be conscious ofthe relish of his food; he prohibited all seasonings and spices, howevermuch he might wish for and need them; and he actually died because heforced his diseased stomach to receive at each meal a certain amount ofaliment, neither more nor less, whatever might be his appetite at thetime, or his utter want of appetite. He wore a girdle armed with ironspikes, which he was accustomed to drive in upon his body (his fleshlessribs) as often as he thought himself in need of such admonition. He wasannoyed and offended if any in his hearing might chance to say that theyhad just seen a beautiful woman. He rebuked a mother who permitted herown children to give her their kisses. Toward a loving sister, whodevoted herself to his comfort, he assumed an artificial harshness ofmanner for the _express purpose_, as he acknowledged, of revolting hersisterly affection. "

And all this sprung from the simple principle that earthly enjoyment wasinconsistent with religion. 

We should fight against every influence which tends to depress the mind, as we would against a temptation to crime. A depressed mind prevents thefree action of the diaphragm and the expansion of the chest. It stopsthe secretions of the body, interferes with the circulation of the bloodin the brain, and deranges the entire functions of the body. Scrofulaand consumption often follow protracted depressions of mind. That "fatalmurmur" which is heard in the upper lobes of the lungs in the firststages of consumption, often follows depressed spirits after some greatmisfortune or sorrow. Victims of suicide are almost always in adepressed state from exhausted vitality, loss of nervous energy, dyspepsia, worry, anxiety, trouble, or grief. 

"Mirth is God's medicine, " says a wise writer; "everybody ought to bathein it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety--all the rust of life, ought to bescoured off by the oil of mirth. " It is better than emery. Every manought to rub himself with it. A man without mirth is like a wagonwithout springs, in which one is caused disagreeably to jolt by everypebble over which it runs. A man with mirth is like a chariot withsprings, in which one can ride over the roughest roads and scarcely feelanything but a pleasant rocking motion. 

"I have told you, " said Southey, "of the Spaniard who always put onspectacles when about to eat cherries, in order that the fruit mightlook larger and more tempting. In like manner I make the most of myenjoyments; and though I do not cast my eyes away from my troubles, Ipack them in as small a compass as I can for myself, and never let themannoy others. " We all know the power of good cheer to magnifyeverything. 

Travelers are told by the Icelanders, who live amid the cold anddesolation of almost perpetual winter, that "Iceland is the best landthe sun shines upon. "

"You are on the shady side of seventy, I expect?" was asked of an oldman. "No, " was the reply, "I am on the sunny side; for I am on the sidenearest to glory. "

A cheerful man is pre-eminently a useful man. He does not cramp hismind, nor take half-views of men and things. He knows that there is muchmisery, but that misery need not be the rule of life. He sees that inevery state people may be cheerful; the lambs skip, birds sing and flyjoyously, puppies play, kittens are full of joyance, the whole air fullof careering and rejoicing insects; that everywhere the good outbalancesthe bad, and that every evil has its compensating balm. 

"Bishop Fénelon is a delicious man, " said Lord Peterborough; "I had torun away from him to prevent his making me a Christian. "

Hume, the historian, never said anything truer than--"To be happy, theperson must be cheerful and gay, not gloomy and melancholy. A propensityto hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow, real poverty. "

Dr. Johnson once remarked with his point and pith that the custom oflooking on the bright side of every event was better than having athousand pounds a year income. But Hume rated the value in dollars andcents of cheerfulness still higher. He said he would rather have acheerful disposition always inclined to look on the bright side ofthings than to be master of an estate with 10, 000 pounds a year. 

"We have not fulfilled every duty, unless we have fulfilled that ofbeing pleasant. "

"If a word or two will render a man happy, " said a Frenchman, "he mustbe a wretch indeed, who will not give it. It is like lighting anotherman's candle with your own, which loses none of its brilliancy by whatthe other gains. "

The sensible young man, in theory at least, chooses for his wife one whowill be able to keep his house, to be the mother of sturdy children, onewho will of all things meet life's experiences with a sweet temper. Itis impossible to imagine a pleasant home with a cross wife, mother orsister, as its presiding genius. And it is a rule, with exceptions, thatgood appetite and sound sleep induce amiability. If, with theseadvantages, a girl or woman, boy or man, is still snappish or surly, whyit must be due to her or his total depravity. 

Some things she should not do; she shouldn't dose herself, or study upher case, or plunge suddenly into vigorous exercise. Moderation is asafe rule to begin with, and, indeed, to keep on with--moderation instudy, in work, in exercise, in everything except fresh air, good, simple food, and sleep. Few people have too much of these. The averagegirl at home can find no more sanitary gymnastics than in doing part ofthe lighter housework. This sort of exercise has object, and interest, and use, which raises it above mere drill. Add to this a merry romp withyounger brothers and sisters, a brisk daily walk, the use for a fewmoments twice a day of dumb bells in a cool, airy room, and it is safeto predict a steady advance toward that ideal state of being in which weforget our bodies and just enjoy ourselves. 

"It is not work that kills men, " says Beecher; "it is worry. Work ishealthy; you can hardly put more on a man than he can bear. But worry isrust upon the blade. It is not movement that destroys the machinery, butfriction. "

Helen Hunt says there is one sin which seems to be everywhere, and byeverybody is underestimated and quite too much overlooked in valuationsof character. It is the sin of fretting. It is as common as air, asspeech; so common that unless it rises above its usual monotone we donot even observe it. Watch any ordinary coming together of people, andwe see how many minutes it will be before somebody frets--that is, makesmore or less complaint of something or other, which probably every onein the room, or car, or on the street corner knew before, and which mostprobably nobody can help. Why say anything about it? It is cold, it ishot, it is wet, it is dry, somebody has broken an appointment, ill-cooked a meal; stupidity or bad faith somewhere has resulted indiscomfort. There are plenty of things to fret about. It is simplyastonishing, how much annoyance and discomfort may be found in thecourse of every-day living, even of the simplest, if one only keeps asharp eye out on that side of things. Some people seem to be alwayshunting for deformities, discords and shadows, instead of beauty, harmony and light. We are born to trouble, as sparks fly upward. Buteven to the sparks flying upward, in the blackest of smoke, there is ablue sky above, and the less time they waste on the road, the soonerthey will reach it. Fretting is all time wasted on the road. 

About two things we should never fret, that which we cannot help, andthat which we can help. Better find one of your own faults than ten ofyour neighbor's. 

It is not the troubles of to-day, but those of to-morrow and next weekand next year, that whiten our heads and wrinkle our faces. 

"Every man we meet looks as if he'd gone out to borrow trouble, withplenty of it on hand, " said a French lady driving in New York. 

The pendulum of a certain clock began to calculate how often it wouldhave to swing backward and forward in the week and in the month to come;then looking further into the future, it made a calculation for a year, etc. The pendulum got frightened and stopped. Do one day's work at atime. Do not worry about the trouble of to-morrow. Most of the troublein life is borrowed trouble, which never actually comes. 

"As all healthy action, physical, intellectual and moral, dependsprimarily on cheerfulness, " says E. P. Whipple, "and as every duty, whether it be to follow a plow or to die at the stake, should be done ina cheerful spirit, the exploration of the sources and conditions of thismost vigorous, exhilarating and creative of the virtues may be as usefulas the exposition of any topic of science or system of prudential art. "

Christ, the great teacher, did not shut Himself up with monks, away fromtemptation of the great world outside. He taught no long-faced, gloomytheology. He taught the gospel of gladness and good cheer. His doctrinesare touched with the sunlight, and flavored with the flowers of thefields. The birds of the air, the beasts of the field, and happy, romping children are in them. True piety is cheerful as the day. 

Cranmer cheers his brother martyrs, and Latimer walks with a faceshining with cheerfulness to the stake, upholds his fellow's spirits, and seasons all his sermons with pleasant anecdotes. 

"Nothing will supply the want of sunshine to peaches, " said Emerson, "and to make knowledge valuable, you must have the cheerfulness ofwisdom. "

In answer to the question, "How shall we overcome temptation, " a notedwriter said, "Cheerfulness is the first thing, cheerfulness is thesecond, and cheerfulness is the third. " A habit of cheerfulness, enabling one to transmute apparent misfortunes into real blessings, is afortune to a young man or young woman just crossing the threshold ofactive life. He who has formed a habit of looking at the bright, happyside of things, who sees the glory in the grass, the sunshine in theflowers, sermons in stones, and good in everything, has a greatadvantage over the chronic dyspeptic, who sees no good in anything. Hishabitual thought sculptures his face into beauty and touches his mannerwith grace. 

We often forget that the priceless charm which will secure to us allthese desirable gifts is within our reach. It is the charm of a sunnytemper, a talisman more potent than station, more precious than gold, more to be desired than fine rubies. It is an aroma, whose fragrancefills the air with the odors of Paradise. 

"It is from these enthusiastic fellows, " says an admirer, "that youhear--what they fully believe, bless them!--that all countries arebeautiful, all dinners grand, all pictures superb, all mountains high, all women beautiful. When such a one has come back from his countrytrip, after a hard year's work, he has always found the cosiest ofnooks, the cheapest houses, the best of landladies, the finest views, and the best dinners. But with the other the case is indeed altered. Hehas always been robbed; he has positively seen nothing; his landlady wasa harpy, his bedroom was unhealthy, and the mutton was so tough that hecould not get his teeth through it. "

"He goes on to talk of the sun in his glory, " says Izaak Walton, "thefields, the meadows, the streams which they have seen, the birds whichthey have heard; he asks what would the blind and deaf give to see andhear what they have seen. "

Of Lord Holland's sunshiny face, Rogers said: "He always comes tobreakfast like a man upon whom some sudden good fortune has fallen. "

But oh, for the glorious spectacles worn by the good-natured man!--oh, for those wondrous glasses, finer than the Claude Lorraine glass, whichthrow a sunlit view over everything, and make the heart glad with littlethings, and thankful for small mercies! Such glasses had honest IzaakWalton, who, coming in from a fishing expedition on the river Lea, burstout into such grateful little talks as this: "Let us, as we walk homeunder the cool shade of this honeysuckle hedge, mention some of thethoughts and joys that have possessed my soul since we two met. And thatour present happiness may appear the greater, and we more thankful forit, I beg you to consider with me, how many do at this very time lieunder the torment of the gout or the toothache, and this we have beenfree from; and let me tell you, that every misery I miss is a newblessing. "

The hypochondriac who nurses his spleen never looks forward cheerfully, but lounges in his invalid chair, and croaks like a raven, forebodingwoe. "Ah, " says he, "you will never succeed; these things always fail. "

The Thug of India, whose prayer is a homicide, and whose offering is thebody of a victim, is melancholy. 

The Fijiian, waiting to smash the skull of a victim, and to prepare abakola for his gods, is gloomy as fear and death. 

The melancholy of the Eastern Jews after their black fast, and theill-temper of monks and nuns after their Fridays and Wednesdays, is veryobservable; it is the recompense which a proud nature takes out of theworld for its selfish sacrifice. Melancholia is the black bile which theGreeks presumed overran and pervaded the bodies of such persons; andfasting does undoubtedly produce this. 

"I once talked with a Rosicrucian about the Great Secret, " said Addison. "He talked of it as a spirit that lived in an emerald, and convertedeverything that was near it to the highest perfection. 'It gives lustreto the sun, ' said he, 'and water to the diamond. It irradiates everymetal, and enriches lead with the property of gold. It brightens smokeinto flame, flame into light, and light into glory. A single raydissipates pain and care from the person on whom it falls. ' Then I foundhis great secret was Content. "

 My crown is in my heart, not on my head: Not decked with diamonds and Indian stones, Nor to be seen: my crown is called content: A crown it is, that seldom kings enjoy. --SHAKESPEARE. 

 Yet, with a heart that's ever kind, A gentle spirit gay, You've spring perennial in your mind, And round you make a May. --THACKERAY. 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

HOLD UP YOUR HEAD. 

 Thoroughly to believe in one's own self, so one's self were thorough, were to do great things. --TENNYSON. 

 If there be a faith that can remove mountains, it is faith in one's own power. --MARIE EBNER-ESCHENBACH. 

 Let no one discourage self-reliance; it is, of all the rest, the greatest quality of true manliness. --KOSSUTH. 

 It needs a divine man to exhibit anything divine. * * * Trust thyself; every breast vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place that divine Providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so. * * * Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind. --EMERSON. 

 This above all, --to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. --SHAKESPEARE. 

"Yes, " said a half-drunken man in a cellar to a parish visitor, a younggirl, "I am a tough and a drunkard, and am just out of jail, and my wifeis starving; but that doesn't give you the right to come into my housewithout knocking to ask questions. "

Another zealous girl declared in a reform club in New York City that shealways went to visit the poor in her carriage, with the crest on thedoor and liveried servants. "It gives me authority, " she said. "Theylisten to my words with more respect. "

The Fräulein Barbara, who founded the home for degraded and drunkensailors in London, used other means to gain influence over them. "Itoo, " she would say, taking the poor applicant by the hand when he cameto her door, "I, too, as well as you, am one of those for whom Christdied. We are brother and sister, and will help each other. "

An English artist, engaged in painting a scene in the London slums, applied to the Board of Guardians of the poor in Chelsea for leave tosketch into it, as types of want and wretchedness, certain picturesquepaupers then in the almshouse. The board refused permission on theground that "a man does not cease to have self-respect and rightsbecause he is a pauper, and that his misfortunes should not be paradedbefore the world. "

The incident helps to throw light on the vexed problem of theintercourse of the rich with the poor. Kind but thoughtless people, whotake up the work of "slumming, " intent upon elevating and reforming theneedy classes, are apt to forget that these unfortunates haveself-respect and rights and sensitive feelings. 

"But I am not derided, " said Diogenes, when some one told him he wasderided. "Only those are ridiculed who feel the ridicule and arediscomposed by it. "

Dr. Franklin used to say that if a man makes a sheep of himself thewolves will eat him. Not less true is it that if a man is supposed to bea sheep, wolves will very likely try to eat him. 

"O God, assist our side, " prayed the Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, a generalin the Prussian service, before going into battle. "At least, avoidassisting the enemy, and leave the result to me. "

"If a man possesses the consciousness of what he is, " said Schelling, "he will soon also learn what he ought to be; let him have a theoreticalrespect for himself, and a practical will soon follow. " A person underthe firm persuasion that he can command resources virtually has them. "Humility is the part of wisdom, and is most becoming in men, " saidKossuth; "but let no one discourage self-reliance; it is, of all therest, the greatest quality of true manliness. " Froude wrote: "A treemust be rooted in the soil before it can bear flowers or fruit. A manmust learn to stand upright upon his own feet, to respect himself, to beindependent of charity or accident. It is on this basis only that anysuperstructure of intellectual cultivation worth having can possibly bebuilt. "

"I think he is a most extraordinary man, " said John J. Ingalls, speaking of Grover Cleveland. "While the Senate was in session to inductHendricks into office, I had an opportunity to study Cleveland, as hesat there like a sphinx. He occupied a seat immediately in front of thevice-president's stand, and from where I sat, I had an unobstructed viewof him. 

"I wanted to fathom, if possible, what manner of a man it was who haddefeated us and taken the patronage of the government over to thedemocracy. We had a new master, so to speak, and a democrat at that, andI looked him over with a good deal of curiosity. 

"There sat a man, the president of the United States, beginning his ruleover the destinies of sixty millions of people, who less than threeyears before was an obscure lawyer, scarcely known outside of ErieCounty, shut up in a dingy office over a livery stable. He had beenmayor of the city of Buffalo at a time when a crisis in its affairsdemanded a courageous head and a firm hand and he supplied them. Thelittle prestige thus gained made him the democratic nominee forgovernor, and at a time (his luck still following him) when theRepublican party of the State was rent with dissensions. He was elected, and (still more luck) by the unprecedented and unheard of majority ofnearly 200, 000 votes. Two years later his party nominated him forpresident and he was elected. 

"There sat this man before me, wholly undisturbed by the pageantry ofthe occasion, calmly waiting to perform his part in the drama, just asan actor awaits his cue to appear on a stage. It was his first visit toWashington. He had never before seen the Capitol and knew absolutelynothing of the machinery of government. All was a mystery to him, but astranger not understanding the circumstances would have imagined thatthe proceedings going on before him were a part of his daily life. 

"The man positively did not move a limb, shut an eye or twitch a muscleduring the entire hour he sat in the Senate chamber. Nor did he betraythe faintest evidence of self-consciousness or emotion, and as I thoughtof the dingy office over the livery stable but three years before hestruck me as a remarkable illustration of the possibilities of Americancitizenship. 

"But the most marvelous exhibition of the man's nerve and of theabsolute confidence he has in himself was yet to come. After theproceedings in the Senate chamber Cleveland was conducted to the eastend of the Capitol to take the oath of office and deliver his inauguraladdress. He wore a close buttoned Prince Albert coat, and between thebuttons he thrust his right hand, while his left he carried behind him. In this position he stood until the applause which greeted him hadsubsided, when he began his address. 

"I looked for him to produce a manuscript, but he did not, and as heprogressed in clear and distinct tones, without hesitation, I wasamazed. With sixty millions of people, yes, with the entire civilizedworld looking on, this man had the courage to deliver an inauguraladdress making him President of the United States as coolly and asunconcernedly as if he were addressing a ward meeting. It was the mostremarkable spectacle this or any other country has ever beheld. "

Believe in yourself; you may succeed when others do not believe in you, but never when you do not believe in yourself. 

"Ah! John Hunter, still hard at work!" exclaimed a physician on findingthe old anatomist at the dissecting table. "Yes, doctor, and you'll findit difficult to meet with another John Hunter when I am gone. "

"Heaven takes a hundred years to form a great genius for theregeneration of an empire and afterward rests a hundred years, " saidKaunitz, who had administered the affairs of his country with greatsuccess for half a century. "This makes me tremble for the Austrianmonarchy after my death. "

"Isn't it beautiful that I can sing so?" asked Jenny Lind, naïvely, of afriend. 

"My Lord, " said William Pitt in 1757 to the Duke of Devonshire, "I amsure that I can save this country and that nobody else can. " He didsave it. 

What seems to us disagreeable egotism in others is often but a strongexpression of confidence in their ability to attain. Great men haveusually had great confidence in themselves. Wordsworth felt sure of hisplace in history and never hesitated to say so. Dante predicted his ownfame. Kepler said it did not matter whether his contemporaries read hisbooks or not. "I may well wait a century for a reader since God haswaited six thousand years for an observer like myself. " "Fear not, " saidJulius Cæsar to his pilot frightened in a storm, "thou bearest Cæsar andhis good fortunes. "

When the Directory at Paris found that Napoleon had become in one monththe most famous man in Europe they determined to check his career, andappointed Kellerman his associate in command. Napoleon promptly, butrespectfully, tendered his resignation, saying, "One bad general isbetter than two good ones; war, like government, is mainly decided bytact. " This decision immediately brought the Directory to terms. 

Emperor Francis was extremely anxious to prove the illustrious descentof his prospective son-in-law. Napoleon refused to have the accountpublished, remarking, "I had rather be the descendant of an honest manthan of any petty tyrant of Italy. I wish my nobility to commence withmyself and derive all my titles from the French people. I am the Rudolphof Hapsburg of my family. My patent of nobility dates from the battle ofMontenotte. "

When Napoleon was informed that the British Government had decreed thathe should be recognized only as general, he said, "They cannot preventme from being myself. "

An Englishman asked Napoleon at Elba who was the greatest general of theage, adding, "I think Wellington. " To which the Emperor replied, "He hasnot yet measured himself against me. "

"Well matured and well disciplined talent is always sure of a market, "said Washington Irving; "but it must not cower at home and expect to besought for. There is a good deal of cant, too, about the success offorward and impudent men, while men of retiring worth are passed overwith neglect. But it usually happens that those forward men have thatvaluable quality of promptness and activity, without which worth is amere inoperative property. A barking dog is often more useful than asleeping lion. "

"Self-respect is the early form in which greatness appears. "

"You may deceive all the people some of the time, " said Lincoln, "someof the people all the time, but not all the people all the time. " Wecannot deceive ourselves any of the time, and the only way to enjoy ourown respect is to deserve it. What would you think of a man who wouldneglect himself and treat his shadow with the greatest respect?

"Self-reliance is a grand element of character, " says Michael Reynolds. "It has won Olympic crowns and Isthmian laurels; it confers kinship withmen who have vindicated their divine right to be held in the world'smemory. "

CHAPTER XXIV. 

BOOKS AND SUCCESS. 

 Ignorance is the curse of God, Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven. --SHAKESPEARE. 

 Prefer knowledge to wealth; for the one is transitory, the other perpetual. --SOCRATES. 

 If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. --FRANKLIN. 

 My early and invincible love of reading, I would not exchange for the treasures of India. --GIBBON. 

 If the crowns of all the kingdoms of the empire were laid down at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, I would spurn them all. --FÉNELON. 

 Who of us can tell What he had been, had Cadmus never taught The art that fixes into form the thought, -- Had Plato never spoken from his cell, Or his high harp blind Homer never strung? --BULWER. 

 When friends grow cold and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and common-place, these only continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope, nor deserted sorrow. --WASHINGTON IRVING. 

"Do you want to know, " asks Robert Collyer, "how I manage to talk to youin this simple Saxon? I read Bunyan, Crusoe, and Goldsmith when I was aboy, morning, noon, and night. All the rest was task work; these were mydelight, with the stories in the Bible, and with Shakespeare, when atlast the mighty master came within our doors. The rest were as senna tome. These were like a well of pure water, and this is the first step Iseem to have taken of my own free will toward the pulpit. * * * I tookto these as I took to milk, and, without the least idea what I wasdoing, got the taste for simple words into the very fibre of my nature. There was day-school for me until I was eight years old, and then I hadto turn in and work thirteen hours a day. * * * * From the days when weused to spell out Crusoe and old Bunyan there had grown up in me adevouring hunger to read books. It made small matter what they were, sothey were books. Half a volume of an old encyclopædia came along--thefirst I had ever seen. How many times I went through that I cannot evenguess. I remember that I read some old reports of the Missionary Societywith the greatest delight. 

"There were chapters in them about China and Labrador. Yet I think it isin reading, as it is in eating, when the first hunger is over you beginto be a little critical, and will by no means take to garbage if you areof a wholesome nature. And I remember this because it touches thisbeautiful valley of the Hudson. I could not go home for the Christmas of1839, and was feeling very sad about it all, for I was only a boy; andsitting by the fire, an old farmer came in and said: 'I notice thou'sfond of reading, so I brought thee summat to read. ' It was Irving's'Sketch Book. ' I had never heard of the work. I went at it, and was 'asthem that dream. ' No such delight had touched me since the old days ofCrusoe. I saw the Hudson and the Catskills, took poor Rip at once intomy heart, as everybody has, pitied Ichabod while I laughed at him, thought the old Dutch feast a most admirable thing, and long before Iwas through, all regret at my lost Christmas had gone down with thewind, and I had found out there are books and books. That vast hunger toread never left me. If there was no candle, I poked my head down to thefire; read while I was eating, blowing the bellows, or walking from oneplace to another. I could read and walk four miles an hour. The worldcentred in books. There was no thought in my mind of any good to comeout of it; the good lay in the reading. I had no more idea of being aminister than you elder men who were boys then, in this town, had that Ishould be here to-night to tell this story. Now, give a boy a passionlike this for anything, books or business, painting or farming, mechanism or music, and you give him thereby a lever to lift his world, and a patent of nobility, if the thing he does is noble. There were twoor three of my mind about books. We became companions, and gave theroughs a wide berth. The books did their work, too, about that drink, and fought the devil with a finer fire. "

"In education, " says Herbert Spencer, "the process of self-developmentshould be encouraged to the fullest extent. Children should be led tomake their own investigations, and to draw their own inferences. Theyshould be _told_ as little as possible, and induced to _discover_ asmuch as possible. Humanity has progressed solely by self-instruction;and that to achieve the best results each mind must progress somewhatafter the same fashion, is continually proved by the marked success ofself-made men. "

"My books, " said Thomas Hood, "kept me from the ring, the dog-pit, thetavern, and the saloon. The associate of Pope and Addison, the mindaccustomed to the noble though silent discourse of Shakespeare andMilton, will hardly seek or put up with low or evil company or slaves. "

"When I get a little money, " said Erasmus, "I buy books, and if any isleft, I buy food and clothes. "

"Hundreds of books read once, " says Robertson, "have passed ascompletely from us as if we had never read them; whereas the disciplineof mind got by writing down, not copying, an abstract of a book whichis worth the trouble fixes it on the mind for years, and, besides, enables one to read other books with more attention and more profit. "

"This habit of reading, I make bold to tell you, " says Trollope, "isyour pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasuresthat God has prepared for His creatures. Other pleasures may be moreecstatic; but the habit of reading is the only enjoyment I know, inwhich there is no alloy. "

The Bible was begun in the desert in Arabia ages before Homer sang andflourished in Asia Minor. Millions of books have since gone intooblivion. Empires have risen and fallen. Revolutions have swept over andchanged the earth. It has always been subject to criticism and obloquy. Mighty men have sought its overthrow. Works of Greek poets who cateredto men's depraved tastes have, in spite of everything, perished. TheBible is a book of religion; and can be tried by no other standard. 

"Read Plutarch, " said Emerson, "and the world is a proud place peopledwith men of positive quality, with heroes and demi-gods standing aroundus who will not let us sleep. "

"There is no business, no avocation whatever, " says Wyttenbach, "whichwill not permit a man, who has an inclination, to give a little time, every day, to the studies of his youth. "

"All the sport in the park, " said Lady Jane Grey, "is but a shadow ofthat pleasure I find in Plato. "

"In the lap of Eternity, " said Heinsius, "among so many divine souls, Itake my seat with so lofty a spirit and such sweet content, that I pityall the great ones and rich men, that have not this happiness. "

"Death itself divides not the wise, " says Bulwer. "Thou meetest Platowhen thine eyes moisten over the Phædo. May Homer live with all menforever!"

"When a man reads, " says President Porter, "he should put himself intothe most intimate intercourse with his author, so that all his energiesof apprehension, judgment and feeling may be occupied with, and arousedby, what his author furnishes, whatever it may be. If repetition orreview will aid him in this, as it often will, let him not disdain orneglect frequent reviews. If the use of the pen, in brief or full notes, in catchwords or other symbols, will aid him, let him not shrink fromthe drudgery of the pen and the commonplace book. "

"Reading is to the mind, " says Addison, "what exercise is to the body. As by the one health is preserved, strengthened and invigorated, by theother, virtue (which is the health of the mind) is kept alive, cherishedand confirmed. "

"There is a world of science necessary in choosing books, " said Bulwer. "I have known some people in great sorrow fly to a novel, or the lastlight book in fashion. One might as well take a rose draught for theplague! Light reading does not do when the heart is really heavy. I amtold that Goethe, when he lost his son, took to study a science that wasnew to him. Ah! Goethe was a physician who knew what he was about. "

"When I served when a young man in India, " said a distinguished Englishsoldier and diplomatist; "when it was the turning point in my life; whenit was a mere chance whether I should become a mere card-playing, hooka-smoking lounger, I was fortunately quartered for two years in theneighborhood of an excellent library, which was made accessible to me. "

"Books, " says E. P. Whipple, "are lighthouses erected in the great seaof time. "

"As a rule, " said Benjamin Disraeli, "the most successful man in life isthe man who has the best information. "

"You get into society, in the widest sense, " says Geikie, "in a greatlibrary, with the huge advantage of needing no introductions, and notdreading repulses. From that great crowd you can choose what companionsyou please, for in the silent levees of the immortals there is no pride, but the highest is at the service of the lowest, with a grand humility. You may speak freely with any, without a thought of your inferiority;for books are perfectly well-bred, and hurt no one's feelings by anydiscriminations. " Sir William Waller observed, "In my study, I am sureto converse with none but wise men, but abroad it is impossible for meto avoid the society of fools. " "It is the glorious prerogative of theempire of knowledge, " says Webster, "that what it gains it never loses. On the contrary, it increases by the multiple of its own power; all itsends become means, all its attainments help to new conquests. "

"At this hour, five hundred years since their creation, " says DeQuincey, "the tales of Chaucer, never equaled on this earth for theirtenderness and for life of picturesqueness, are read familiarly by manyin the charming language of their natal day, and by others in themodernization of Dryden, of Pope, and Wordsworth. At this hour, onethousand eight hundred years since their creation, the pagan tales ofOvid, never equaled on this earth for the gayety of their movement andthe capricious graces of their narrative, are read by all Christendom. "

"There is no Past so long as Books shall live, " says Lytton. 

"No wonder Cicero said that he would part with all he was worth so hemight live and die among his books, " says Geikie. "No wonder Petrarchwas among them to the last, and was found dead in their company. Itseems natural that Bede should have died dictating, and that Leibnitzshould have died with a book in his hand, and Lord Clarendon at hisdesk. Buckle's last words, 'My poor book!' tell a passion that forgotdeath; and it seemed only a fitting farewell when the tear stole downthe manly cheeks of Scott as they wheeled him into his library, when hehad come back to Abbotsford to die. Southey, white-haired, a livingshadow, sitting stroking and kissing the books he could no longer openor read, is altogether pathetic. "

"No entertainment is so cheap as reading, " says Mary Wortley Montagu;"nor any pleasure so lasting. " Good books elevate the character, purifythe taste, _take the attractiveness out of low pleasures_, and lift usupon a higher plane of thinking and living. It is not easy to be meandirectly after reading a noble and inspiring book. The conversation of aman who reads for improvement or pleasure will be flavored by hisreading; but it will not be about his reading. 

Perhaps no other thing has such power to lift the poor out of hispoverty, the wretched out of his misery, to make the burden-bearerforget his burden, the sick his sufferings, the sorrower his grief, thedowntrodden his degradation, as books. They are friends to the lonely, companions to the deserted, joy to the joyless, hope to the hopeless, good cheer to the disheartened, a helper to the helpless. They bringlight into darkness, and sunshine into shadow. 

"Twenty-five years ago, when I was a boy, " said Rev. J. A. James, "aschool-fellow gave me an infamous book, which he lent me for onlyfifteen minutes. At the end of that time it was returned to him, butthat book has haunted me like a spectre ever since. I have asked God onmy knees to obliterate that book from my mind, but I believe that Ishall carry down with me to the grave the spiritual damage I receivedduring those fifteen minutes. "

Did Homer and Plato and Socrates and Virgil ever dream that their wordswould echo through the ages, and aid in shaping men's lives in thenineteenth century? They were mere infants when on earth in comparisonwith the mighty influence and power they now yield. Every life on theAmerican continent has in some degree been influenced by them. Christ, when on earth, never exerted one millionth part of the influence Hewields to-day. While He reigns supreme in few human hearts, He touchesall more or less, the atheist as well as the saint. On the other handwho shall say how many crimes were committed the past year by wicked menburied long ago? Their books, their pictures, their terrible examples, live in all they reach, and incite to evil deeds. How important, then, is the selection of books which are to become a part of your being. 

Knowledge cannot be stolen from us. It cannot be bought or sold. We maybe poor, and the sheriff may come and sell our furniture, or drive awayour cow, or take our pet lamb, and leave us homeless and penniless; buthe cannot lay the law's hand upon the jewelry of our minds. 

"Good books and the wild woods are two things with which man can neverbecome too familiar, " says George W. Cable. "The friendship of trees isa sort of self-love and is very wholesome. All inanimate nature is but amirror, and it is greater far to have the sense of beauty than it is tobe only its insensible depository. 

"The books that inspire imagination, whether in truth or fiction; thatelevate the thoughts, are the right kind to read. Our emotions aresimply the vibrations of our soul. 

"The moment fiction becomes mendacious it is bad, for it induces us tobelieve a lie. Fiction purely as fiction must be innocent and beautiful, and its beauty must be more than skin deep. Every field of art is aplayground and we are extra pleased when the artist makes that field agymnasium also. "

Cotton Mather's "Essay to do Good" read by the boy Franklin influencedthe latter's whole life. He advised everybody to read with a pen in handand to make notes of all they read. 

James T. Fields visited Jesse Pomeroy, the boy murderer, in jail. Pomeroy told him he had been a great reader of "blood and thunder"stories; that he had read sixty dime novels about scalping and otherbloody performances; and he thought there was no doubt that these bookshad put the horrible thoughts into his mind which led to his murderousacts. 

Many a boy has gone to sea and become a rover for life under theinfluence of Marryat's novels. Abbott's "Life of Napoleon, " read at theage of seven years, sent one boy whom I knew to the army before he wasfourteen. Many a man has committed crime from the leavening, multiplyinginfluence of a bad book read when a boy. The chaplain of Newgate prisonin London, in one of his annual reports to the Lord Mayor, referring tomany fine-looking lads of respectable parentage in the city prison, saidthat he discovered that "all these boys, without exception, had been inthe habit of reading those cheap periodicals" which were published forthe alleged amusement of youth of both sexes. There is not a policecourt or a prison in this country where similar cases could not befound. One can hardly measure the moral ruin that has been caused inthis generation by the influence of bad books. 

In the parlor window of the old mossy vicarage where Coleridge spent hisdreamy childhood lay a well-thumbed copy of that volume of Orientalfancy, the "Arabian Nights, " and he has told us with what mingled desireand apprehension he was wont to look at the precious book, until themorning sunshine had touched and illuminated it, when, seizing ithastily, he would carry it off in triumph to some leafy nook in thevicarage garden, and plunge delightedly into its maze of marvels andenchantments. 

Beecher said that Ruskin's works taught him the secret of seeing, andthat no man could ever again be quite the same man or look at the worldin the same way after reading him. Samuel Drew said, "Locke's 'Essay onthe Understanding' awakened me from stupor, and induced me to form aresolution to abandon the groveling views I had been accustomed tomaintain. " An English tanner, whose leather gained a great reputation, said he should not have made it so good if he had not read Carlyle. Thelives of Washington and Henry Clay, which Lincoln borrowed fromneighbors in the wilderness, and devoured by the light of the cabinfire, inspired his life. In his early manhood he read Paine's "Age ofReason, " and Volney's "Ruins, " which so influenced his mind that hewrote an essay to prove the unreliability of the Bible. These two booksnearly unbalanced his moral character. But, fortunately, the books whichfell into his hands in after years corrected this evil influence. Thetrend of many a life for good or ill, for success or failure, has beendetermined by a single book. The books which we read early in life arethose which influence us most. When Garfield was working for a neighborhe read "Sinbad the Sailor" and the "Pirate's Own Book. " These booksrevealed a new world to him, and his mother with difficulty kept himfrom going to sea. He was fascinated with the sea life which these bookspictured to his young imagination. The "Voyages of Captain Cook" ledWilliam Carey to go on a mission to the heathen. "The Imitation ofChrist" and Taylor's "Holy Living and Dying" determined the character ofJohn Wesley. "Shakespeare and the Bible, " said John Sharp, "made meArchbishop of York. " The "Vicar of Wakefield" awakened the poeticalgenius in Goethe. 

"I have been the bosom friend of Leander and Romeo, " said Lowell. "Iseem to go behind Shakespeare, and to get my intelligence at first hand. Sometimes, in my sorrow, a line from Spenser steals in upon my memory asif by some vitality and external volition of its own, like a blast fromthe distant trump of a knight pricking toward the court of Faerie, and Iam straightway lifted out of that sadness and shadow into the sunshineof a previous and long-agone experience. "

"Who gets more enjoyment out of eating, " asks Amos R. Wells, "thepampered millionaire, whose tongue is the wearied host of myriads ofsugary, creamy, spicy guests, or the little daughter of the laborer, trotting about all the morning with helpful steps, who has come a longtwo miles with her father's dinner to eat it with him from a tin pail?And who gets the more pleasure out of reading, the satiatedfiction-glutton, her brain crammed with disordered fragments ofcountless scenes of adventure, love and tragedy, impatient of the sameold situations, the familiar characters, the stale plots--she or thegirl who is fired with a love for history, say, who wants to know allabout the grand old, queer old Socrates, and then about his friends, andthen about the times in which he lived, and then about the way in whichthey all lived, then about the Socratic legacy to the ages? Why, willthat girl ever be done with the feast? Can you not see, looking down onher joy with a blessing, the very Lord of the banquet, who has orderedall history and ordained that the truth He fashions shall be strangeralways than the fiction man contrives? Take the word of a man who hasmade full trial of both. Solid reading is as much more interesting andattractive than frivolous reading as solid living is more recreativethan frivolous living. "

"I solemnly declare, " said Sidney Smith, "that but for the love ofknowledge, I should consider the life of the meanest hedger and ditcheras preferable to that of the greatest and richest man in existence; forthe fire of our minds is like the fires which the Persians burn in themountains, it flames night and day, and is immortal, and not to bequenched! Upon something it must act and feed--upon the pure spirit ofknowledge, or upon the foul dregs of polluting passions. Therefore, whenI say, in conducting your understanding, love knowledge with a greatlove, with a vehement love, with a love co-eval with life--what do I saybut love innocence, love virtue, love purity of conduct, love thatwhich, if you are rich and great, will vindicate the blind fortune whichhas made you so, and make men call it justice; love that which, if youare poor, will render your poverty respectable, and make the proudestfeel it unjust to laugh at the meanness of your fortunes; love thatwhich will comfort you, adorn you, and never quit you--which will opento you the kingdom of thought, and all the boundless regions ofconception, as an asylum against the cruelty, the injustice, and thepain that may be your lot in the world--that which will make yourmotives habitually great and honorable, _and light up in an instant athousand noble disdains at the very thought of meanness and of fraud_?"

Do I feel like hearing an eloquent sermon? Spurgeon and Beecher, Whitefield, Hall, Collyer, Phillips Brooks, Canon Farrar, Dr. Parker, Talmage, are all standing on my bookcase, waiting to give me theirgreatest efforts at a moment's notice. Do I feel indisposed, and need alittle recreation? This afternoon I will take a trip across theAtlantic, flying against the wind and over breakers without fear ofseasickness on the ocean greyhounds. I will inspect the world renownedLiverpool docks; take a run up to Hawarden, call on Mr. Gladstone; flyover to London, take a run through the British Museum and see thewonderful collection from all nations; go through the National ArtGallery, through the Houses of Parliament, visit Windsor Castle andBuckingham Palace, call upon Queen Victoria, the Prince of Wales; take arun through the lake region and call upon the great writers, visitOxford and Cambridge; cross the English Channel, stop at Rouen, whereJoan of Arc was burned to death by the English, take a flying trip toParis, visit the tomb of Napoleon, the Louvre Gallery; take a peep atone of the greatest pieces of sculpture in existence, the Venus de Milo(which a rich and ignorant person offered to buy if they would give hima fresh one), take a glance at some of the greatest paintings inexistence along the miles of galleries; take a peep into the Grand OperaHouse, the grandest in the world (to make room for which 427 buildingswere demolished), promenade through the Champs de Elysée, pass under thetriumphal arch of Napoleon, take a run out to Versailles and inspect thefamous palace of Louis XIV. , upon which he spent perhaps $100, 000, 000. 

Do I desire to hear eloquent speeches? Through my books I can enter theParliament and listen to the thrilling oratory of Disraeli, ofGladstone, of Bright, of O'Connor; they will admit me to the floor ofthe Senate, where I can hear the matchless oratory of a Webster, of aClay, of a Calhoun, of a Sumner, of Everett, of Wilson. They will passme into the Roman Forum, where I can hear Cicero, or to the rostrums ofGreece, where I may listen spell-bound to the magic oratory of aDemosthenes. 

"No matter how poor I am, " says Channing; "no matter though theprosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling; if thesacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof; ifMilton will cross my threshold to sing to me of paradise, andShakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings ofthe human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practicalwisdom, --I shall not pine for the want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is calledthe best society in the place where I live. "

"With the dead there is no rivalry, " says Macaulay. "In the dead thereis no change. Plato is never sullen; Cervantes is never petulant;Demosthenes never comes unseasonably; Dante never stays too long; nodifference of political opinion can alienate Cicero; no heresy canexcite the horror of Bossuet. "

"Heed not the idle assertion that literary pursuits will disqualify youfor the active business of life, " says Alexander H. Everett. "Reject itas a mere imagination, inconsistent with principle, unsupported byexperience. "

The habit of reading may become morbid. There is a novel-readingdisease. There are people who are almost as much tied to their novels asan intemperate man is tied to his bottle. The more of these novels theyread, the weaker their minds become. They remember nothing; they readfor the stimulus; their reasoning powers become weaker and weaker, theirmemory more treacherous. The mind is ruined for healthy intellectualfood. They have no taste for history or biography, or anything butcheap, trashy, sensational novels. 

The passive reception of other men's thoughts is not education. Bewareof intellectual dram drinking and intellectual dissipation. It isemasculating. Beware of the book which does not make you determined togo and do something and be something in the world. 

The great difference between the American graduate and the graduatesfrom the English universities is that the latter have not read manybooks superficially, but a few books well. The American graduate has asmattering of many books, but has not become master of any. The same islargely true of readers in general; they want to know a little ofeverything. They want to read all the latest publications, good, bad andindifferent, if it is only new. As a rule our people want light reading, "something to read" that will take up the attention, kill time on therailroad or at home. As a rule English people read more substantialbooks, older books, books which have established their right to exist. They are not so eager for "recent publications. "

Joseph Cook advises youth to always make notes of their reading. Mr. Cook uses the margins of his books for his notes, and marks all of hisown books very freely, so that every volume in his library becomes anotebook. He advises all young men and young women to keep commonplacebooks. We cannot too heartily recommend this habit of taking notes. Itis a great aid to memory, and it helps wonderfully to locate or to findfor future use what we have read. It helps to assimilate and make ourown whatever we read. The habit of taking notes of lectures and sermonsis an excellent one. One of the greatest aids to education is the habitof writing out an analysis or a skeleton of a book or article after wehave read it; also of a sermon or a lecture. This habit has made many astrong, vigorous thinker and writer. In this connection we cannot toostrongly recommend the habit of saving clippings from our readingswherever possible of everything which would be likely to assist us inthe future. These scrap-books, indexed, often become of untoldadvantage, especially if in the line of our work. Much of what we callgenius in great men comes from these note-books and scrap-books. 

How many poor boys and girls who thought they had "no chance" in lifehave been started upon noble careers by the grand books of Smiles, Todd, Mathews, Munger, Whipple, Geikie, Thayer, and others. 

You should bring your mind to the reading of a book, or to the study ofany subject, as you take an axe to the grindstone; not for what you getfrom the stone, but for the sharpening of the axe. While it is true thatthe facts learned from books are worth more than the dust from thestone, even in much greater ratio is the mind more valuable than theaxe. Bacon says: "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to beread only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some fewto be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Reading maketh afull man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if heconfer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, hehad need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Historiesmake men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophydeep; morals grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend. "

CHAPTER XXV. 

RICHES WITHOUT WINGS. 

 Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called. --EPH. Iv. I. 

 Abundance consists not alone in material possession, but in an uncovetous spirit. --SELDEN. 

 Less coin, less care; to know how to dispense with wealth is to possess it. --REYNOLDS. 

 Rich, from the very want of wealth, In heaven's best treasures, peace and health. --GRAY. 

 Money never made a man happy yet; there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one. --FRANKLIN. 

 There are treasures laid up in the heart, treasures of charity, piety, temperance, and soberness. These treasures a man takes with him beyond death, when he leaves this world. --BUDDHIST SCRIPTURES. 

 "It is better to get wisdom than gold; for wisdom is better than rubies, and all things that may be desired are not to be compared to it. "

 "Better a cheap coffin and a plain funeral after a useful, unselfish life, than a grand mausoleum after a loveless, selfish life. "

 I ought not to allow any man, because he has broad lands, to feel that he is rich in my presence. I ought to make him feel that I can do without his riches, that I cannot be bought--neither by comfort, neither by pride, --and although I be utterly penniless, and receiving bread from him, that he is the poor man beside me. --EMERSON. 

"I don't want such things, " said Epictetus to the rich Roman orator whowas making light of his contempt for money-wealth; "and besides, " saidthe stoic, "you are poorer than I am, after all. You have silvervessels, but earthenware reasons, principles, appetites. My mind to me akingdom is, and it furnishes me with abundant and happy occupation inlieu of your restless idleness. All your possessions seem small to you;mine seem great to me. Your desire is insatiate, mine is satisfied. "

"Lord, how many things are in the world of which Diogenes hath no need!"exclaimed the stoic, as he wandered among the miscellaneous articles ata country fair. 

"One would think, " said Boswell, "that the proprietor of all this(Keddlestone, the seat of Lord Scarsfield) must be happy. " "Nay, sir, "said Johnson, "all this excludes but one evil, poverty. "

"What property has he left behind him?" people ask when a man dies; butthe angel who receives him asks, "What good deeds hast thou sent beforethee?"

"What is the best thing to possess?" asked an ancient philosopher of hispupils. One answered, "Nothing is better than a good eye, "--a figurativeexpression for a liberal and contented disposition. Another said, "Agood companion is the best thing in the world;" a third chose a goodneighbor; and a fourth, a wise friend. But Eleazar said: "A good heartis better than them all. " "True, " said the master; "thou hastcomprehended in two words all that the rest have said, for he that hatha good heart will be contented, a good companion, a good neighbor, andwill easily see what is fit to be done by him. "

"My kingdom for a horse, " said Richard III. Of England amid the press ofBosworth Field. "My kingdom for a moment, " said Queen Elizabeth on herdeath-bed. And millions of others, when they have felt earth, its richesand power slipping from their grasp, have shown plainly that deep downin their hearts they value such things at naught when really comparedwith the blessed light of life, the stars and flowers, the companionshipof friends, and far above all else, the opportunity of growth anddevelopment here and of preparation for future life. 

Queen Caroline Matilda of Denmark wrote on the window of her prison, with her diamond ring: "Oh, keep me innocent; make others great. "

"These are my jewels, " said Cornelia to the Campanian lady who asked tosee her gems; and she pointed with pride to her boys returning fromschool. The reply was worthy the daughter of Scipio Africanus and wifeof Tiberius Gracchus. The most valuable production of any country is itscrop of men. 

"I will take away thy treasures, " said a tyrant to a philosopher. "Nay, that thou canst not, " was the retort; "for, in the first place, I havenone that thou knowest of. My treasure is in heaven, and my heart isthere. "

Some people are born happy. No matter what their circumstances are theyare joyous, content and satisfied with everything. They carry aperpetual holiday in their eye and see joy and beauty everywhere. Whenwe meet them they impress us as just having met with some good luck, orthat they have some good news to tell you. Like the bees that extracthoney from every flower, they have a happy alchemy which transmutes evengloom into sunshine. In the sick room they are better than the physicianand more potent than drugs. All doors open to these people. They arewelcome everywhere. 

We make our own worlds and people them, while memory, the scribe, faithfully registers the account of each as we pass the milestonesdotting the way. Are we not, then, responsible for the inhabitants ofour little worlds? We should fill them with the true, the beautiful andthe good, since we are endowed with the faculty of creating. 

"Genius, " says Whipple, "may almost be defined as the faculty ofacquiring poverty. " It is the men of talent who make money out of thework of the men of genius. Somebody has truly said, that the greatestworks have brought the least benefit to their authors. They were beyondthe reach of appreciation before appreciation came. 

There is an Eastern legend of a powerful genius, who promised abeautiful maiden a gift of rare value if she would pass through a fieldof corn and, without pausing, going backward, or wandering hither andthither, select the largest and ripest ear, --the value of the gift to bein proportion to the size and perfection of the ear she should choose. She passed through the field, seeing a great many well worth gathering, but always hoping to find a larger and more perfect one, she passed themall by, when, coming to a part of the field where the stalks grew morestunted, she disdained to take one from these, and so came through tothe other side without having selected any. 

A man may make millions and be a failure still. Money-making is not thehighest success. The life of a well-known millionaire was not trulysuccessful. He had but one ambition. He coined his very soul intodollars. The almighty dollar was his sun, and was mirrored in his heart. He strangled all other emotions and hushed and stifled all nobleraspirations. He grasped his riches tightly, till stricken by the scytheof death; when, in the twinkling of an eye, he was transformed from oneof the richest men who ever lived in this world to one of the poorestsouls that ever went out of it. 

Lincoln always yearned for a rounded wholeness of character; and hisfellow lawyers called him "perversely honest. " Nothing could induce himto take the wrong side of a case, or to continue on that side afterlearning that it was unjust or hopeless. After giving considerable timeto a case in which he had received from a lady a retainer of two hundreddollars, he returned the money, saying: "Madam, you have not a peg tohang your case on. " "But you have earned that money, " said the lady. "No, no, " replied Lincoln, "that would not be right. I can't take payfor doing my duty. "

Agassiz would not lecture at five hundred dollars a night, because hehad no time to make money. Charles Sumner, when a senator, declined tolecture at any price, saying that his time belonged to Massachusetts andthe nation. Spurgeon would not speak for fifty nights in America at onethousand dollars a night, because he said he could do better: he couldstay in London and try to save fifty souls. All honor to the comparativefew in every walk of life who, amid the strong materialistic tendenciesof our age, still speak and act earnestly, inspired by the hope ofrewards other than gold or popular favor. These are our truly great menand women. They labor in their ordinary vocations with no less zealbecause they give time and thought to higher things. 

King Midas, in the ancient myth, asked that everything he touched mightbe turned to gold, for then, he thought, he would be perfectly happy. His request was granted, but when his clothes, his food, his drink, theflowers he plucked, and even his little daughter, whom he kissed, wereall changed into yellow metal, he begged that the Golden Touch might betaken from him. He had learned that many other things are intrinsicallyfar more valuable than all the gold that was ever dug from the earth. 

The "beggarly Homer, who strolled, God knows when, in the infancy andbarbarism of the world, " was richer far than Croesus and added morewealth to the world than the Rothschilds, the Vanderbilts and Goulds. 

An Arab who fortunately escaped death after losing his way in thedesert, without provisions, tells of his feelings when he found a bagfull of pearls, just as he was about to abandon all hope. "I shall neverforget, " said he, "the relish and delight that I felt on supposing it tobe dried wheat, nor the bitterness and despair I suffered on discoveringthat the bag contained pearls. "

It is an interesting fact in this money-getting era that a poor author, or a seedy artist, or a college president with frayed coat-sleeves, hasmore standing in society and has more paragraphs written about him inthe papers than many a millionaire. This is due, perhaps, to the maligninfluence of money-getting and to the benign effect of purelyintellectual pursuits. As a rule every great success in the money worldmeans the failure and misery of hundreds of antagonists. Every successin the world of intellect and character is an aid and profit to society. Character is a mark cut upon something, and this indelible markdetermines the only true value of all people and all their work. Dr. Hunter said: "No man was ever a great man who wanted to be one. " Artistscannot help putting themselves and their own characters into theirworks. The vulgar artist cannot paint a virtuous picture. The gross, thebizarre, the sensitive, the delicate, all come out on the canvas andtell the story of his life. 

Who would not choose to be a millionaire of deeds with a Lincoln, aGrant, a Florence Nightingale, a Childs; a millionaire of ideas withEmerson, with Lowell, with Shakespeare, with Wordsworth; a millionaireof statesmanship with a Gladstone, a Bright, a Sumner, a Washington?

Some men are rich in health, in constant cheerfulness, in a mercurialtemperament which floats them over troubles and trials enough to sink ashipload of ordinary men. Others are rich in disposition, family, andfriends. There are some men so amiable that everybody loves them; someso cheerful that they carry an atmosphere of jollity about them. Someare rich in integrity and character. 

"Who is the richest of men?" asked Socrates. "He who is content with theleast, for contentment is nature's riches. "

"Do you know, sir, " said a devotee of Mammon to John Bright, "that I amworth a million sterling?" "Yes, " said the irritated but calm-spiritedrespondent, "I do; and I know that it is all you are worth. "

A bankrupt merchant, returning home one night, said to his noble wife, "My dear, I am ruined; everything we have is in the hands of thesheriff. " After a few moments of silence the wife looked into his faceand asked, "Will the sheriff sell you?" "Oh, no. " "Will the sheriff sellme?" "Oh, no. " "Then do not say we have lost everything. All that ismost valuable remains to us--manhood, womanhood, childhood. We have lostbut the results of our skill and industry. We can make another fortuneif our hearts and hands are left us. "

"We say a man is 'made', " said Beecher. "What do we mean? That he hasgot the control of his lower instincts, so that they are only fuel tohis higher feelings, giving force to his nature? That his affectionsare like vines, sending out on all sides blossoms and clustering fruits?That his tastes are so cultivated that all beautiful things speak tohim, and bring him their delights? That his understanding is opened, sothat he walks through every hall of knowledge, and gathers itstreasures? That his moral feelings are so developed and quickened thathe holds sweet commerce with Heaven? O, no--none of these things. He iscold and dead in heart, and mind, and soul. Only his passions are alive;but--he is worth five hundred thousand dollars!

"And we say a man is 'ruined. ' Are his wife and children dead? O, no. Have they had a quarrel, and are they separated from him? O, no. Has helost his reputation through crime? No. Is his reason gone? O, no; it isas sound as ever. Is he struck through with disease? No. He has lost hisproperty, and he is ruined. The _man_ ruined! When shall we learn that'a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which hepossesseth?'"

"How is it possible, " asks an ancient philosopher, "that a man who hasnothing, who is naked, houseless, without a hearth, squalid, without aslave, without a city, can pass a life that flows easily? See, God hassent you a man to show you that it is possible. Look at me who amwithout a city, without a house, without possessions, without a slave;I sleep on the ground; I have no wife, no children, no prætorium, butonly the earth and heavens, and one poor cloak. And what do I want? Am Inot without sorrow? Am I not without fear? Am I not free? When did anyof you see me failing in the object of my desire? or even falling intothat which I would avoid? Did I ever blame God or man? Did I ever accuseany man? Did any of you ever see me with a sorrowful countenance?"

"You are a plebeian, " said a patrician to Cicero. "I am a plebeian, "replied the great Roman orator; "the nobility of my family begins withme, that of yours will end with you. " No man deserves to be crowned withhonor whose life is a failure, and he who lives only to eat and drinkand accumulate money is surely not successful. The world is no betterfor his living in it. He never wiped a tear from a sad face, neverkindled a fire upon a frozen hearth. There is no flesh in his heart; heworships no god but gold. 

Why should I scramble and struggle to get possession of a little portionof this earth? This is my world now; why should I envy others its merelegal possession? It belongs to him who can see it, enjoy it. I need notenvy the so-called owners of estates in Boston and New York. They aremerely taking care of my property and keeping it in excellent conditionfor me. For a few pennies for railroad fare whenever I wish I can seeand possess the best of it all. It has cost me no effort, it gives me nocare; yet the green grass, the shrubbery, and the statues on the lawns, the finer sculptures and paintings within, are always ready for mewhenever I feel a desire to look upon them. I do not wish to carry themhome with me, for I could not give them half the care they now receive;besides, it would take too much of my valuable time, and I should beworrying continually lest they be spoiled or stolen. I have much of thewealth of the world now. It is all prepared for me without any pains onmy part. All around me are working hard to get things that will pleaseme, and competing to see who can give them the cheapest. The little Ipay for the use of libraries, railroads, galleries, parks, is less thanit would cost to care for the least of all I use. Life and landscape aremine, the stars and flowers, the sea and air, the birds and trees. Whatmore do I want? All the ages have been working for me; all mankind aremy servants. I am only required to feed and clothe myself, an easy taskin this land of opportunity. 

There is scarcely an idea more infectious or potent than the love ofmoney. It is a yellow fever, decimating its votaries and ruining morefamilies in the land, than all the plagues or diseases put together. Instances of its malevolent power occur to every reader. Almost everysquare foot of land of our continent during the early buccaneer period(some call it the march of civilization), has been ensanguined throughthe madness for treasure. Read the pages of our historian Prescott, andyou will see that the whole anti-Puritan history of America resolvesitself into an awful slaughter for gold. Discoveries were only sideissues. 

Speak, history, who are life's victors? Unroll thy long scroll and say, have they won who first reached the goal, heedless of a brother'srights? And has he lost in life's great race who stopped "to raise afallen child, and place him on his feet again, " or to give a faintingcomrade care; or to guide or assist a feeble woman? Has he lost whohalts before the throne when duty calls, or sorrow, or distress? Isthere no one to sing the pæan of the conquered who fell in the battle oflife? of the wounded, the beaten, who died overwhelmed in the strife? ofthe low and humble, the weary and broken-hearted, who strove and whofailed, in the eyes of men, but who did their duty as God gave them tosee it?

"We have yet no man who has leaned _entirely_ on his character, andeaten angel's food, " said Emerson; "who, trusting to his sentiments, found life made of miracles; who, working for _universal aims_, foundhimself fed, he knew not how; clothed, sheltered, and weaponed, he knewnot how, and yet it was done by his own hands. "

At a time when it was considered dangerous to society in Europe for thecommon people to read books and listen to lectures on any but religioussubjects, Charles Knight determined to enlighten the masses by cheapliterature. He believed that a paper might be instructive and not bedull, cheap without being wicked. He started the "Penny Magazine, " whichacquired a circulation of two hundred thousand the first year. Knightprojected the "Penny Cyclopedia, " the "Library of EntertainingKnowledge, " "Half-Hours with the Best Authors, " and other useful worksat a low price. His whole adult life was spent in the work of elevatingthe common people by cheap, yet wholesome publications. He died inpoverty, but grateful people have erected a noble monument over hisashes. 

How many rich dwellings there are, crowded with every appointment ofluxury, that are only glittering caverns of selfishness and discontent!"Better a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatredtherewith. "

"No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger, "says Beecher. "It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich orpoor according to what he _is_, not according to what he _has_. "

If our thoughts are great and noble, no mean surroundings can make usmiserable. It is the mind that makes the body rich. 

 Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 'Tis only noble to be good. Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood. --TENNYSON. 

 Be noble! and the nobleness that lies In other men, sleeping, but never dead, Will rise in majesty to meet thine own. --LOWELL. 

PUSHING TO THE FRONT

 OR, SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES, by ORISON SWETT MARDEN. A book of inspiration and help to the youth of America who long to be somebody and to do something in the world, many of whom, hedged in as it were by iron walls of circumstances feel that they have "no chance in life. " ==> Passed through _a dozen editions its first year_. It is used _in Boston and other public schools_, and has been republished and heartily received in foreign countries. 

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 A modern wonder. It should be in the hands of every American youth. --_Bishop Newman_. 

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 Best book of the kind ever written. --_Golden Rule_. 

 There is an uplift on every page, and wisdom in every paragraph. --_Epworth Herald_. 

 I have read with unusual interest your book "Pushing to the Front. " It cannot but be an inspiration to every boy or girl who reads it. --_Wm. McKinley_. 

 A most interesting and valuable book to the youth of America. --_Senator Henry Cabot Lodge_. 

 An admirable book, a timely contribution of advice and inspiration to youth. --_Chauncey M. Depew_. 

 The author has done a most valuable service to the young life of the country. --_Bishop J. H. Vincent_. 

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 There are enough brilliant sayings and lively anecdotes in this book to supply an after-dinner speaker or conversationalist for a lifetime. It is wise, witty, inspiring. --_Woman's Journal. _

 It will be a missionary of the highest type wherever it goes. --_New York Times. _

 Artistic, logical, stimulating mentally and morally. --_Rev. Dr. Lorimer. _

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Transcriber's List of Corrections

 Location Original Correction

 CHAPTER VII. Diction-tionary [_at line break_] Dictionary

 CHAPTER XI. More of less more or less

 CHAPTER XV. Battle of life, battle of life. 

 CHAPTER XVI. Philsopher philosopher

 CHAPTER XIX. Impossbile impossible

 CHAPTER XX. Notoble notable

 CHAPTER XXI. Conquerers conquerors

 SUCCESS [_advertisement_] Dr. Brooker T. Washington. Dr. Booker T. Washington.