CHAPTER XX.

NERVE, GRIT, GRIP, PLUCK.

When you get into a tight place, and everything goes against you, till it seems as if you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that's just the place and time that the tide 'it turn.- HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.

I find nothing so singular in life as this, that everything opposing appears to lose its substance the moment one actually grapples with it. - HAWTHORNE.

"Never give up: for the wisest is boldest, Knowing that Providence mingles the cup; And of all maxims, the best, as the oldest, In the stern watchword of ' Never give up!’ Be firm ; one constant element of luck Is genuine, solid, old Teutonic pluck. Stick to your, aim; the mongrel's hold will slip, But only crowbars loose the bull-dog's grip; Small though he looks, the jaw that never yields Drags down the bellowing monarch of the fields.

HOLMES.

"LET it split," said a professor, when told that his principles, if carried out, would split the world to pieces; " there are enough more planets."

"Soldiers, you are Frenchmen," said Napoleon, coolly walking among his disaffected generals when they threatened his life in the Egyptian campaign ; "you are too many to assassinate, and too few to intimidate me." "How brave he is!" exclaimed the ringleader, as he withdrew, completely cowed.

" General Taylor never surrenders," said old " Rough and Ready " at Buena Vista, when Santa Anna with 20,000 men offered him a chance to save his 4,000 soldiers by capitulation. The battle was long and desperate, but at length the Mexicans were glad to avoid

ULYSSES S. GRANT

"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."
further defeat by flight. When Lincoln was asked how Grant impressed him as a general, he replied, " The greatest thing about him is cool persistency of purpose. He has the grip of a bulldog; when he once gets his teeth in, nothing can shake him off. It was " On to Richmond," and “I shall fight it out on this line if it takes all summer," that settled the fate of the Rebel. Lion.

When Caesar was captured by pirates, they offered to release him for twenty talents. " It is too little," said the Roman, "you shall have fifty. But when I am free I will crucify every one of you." He kept his word.

" Oh! if the duke has said that, of course t' other fellow must give way," said Sydney Smith, just before the battle of Waterloo, when told that Wellington, had decided to keep his position at all events.

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

When Philip threatened to prohibit the enjoyment of all their privileges, the Lacedemonians asked whether he would also prohibit their dying.

" My sword is too short," said a Spartan youth to his father. "Add a step to it, then," was the only reply.

It is said that the snapping-turtle will not release his grip, even after his head is cut off. He is resolved, if he dies, to die hard. It is just such grit that enables many a man to succeed, for what men call luck is generally the prerogative of valiant souls. It is the final effort that brings victory. It is the last pull of the oar, with clenched teeth and knit muscles, that shows what Oxford boatmen call "the beefiness of the fellow." Chauncey Depew said to a class of young men: " After choosing your profession, put up this motto over your door,, I Stick, dig, save.'

As late as 1861 Grant wrote to a friend, telling his satisfaction at an increase of salary in the leather business at Galena, Ill., from $600 to $800 a year. He expressed a hope of reaching what then seemed his highest ambition, a partnership in the firm. In May, 1861, he communicated with the general in command at Washington, asking to be assigned to military duty not for one, three, or six months, but until the close of the war, in such capacity as might offer. No notice was ever taken of this request.

At forty he was an obscure citizen of Galena. At forty-two he was known as one of the greatest generals in history. Speaking of Shiloh he once said: " I thought I was going to fail, but I kept right on." It is this keeping right on that wins in the battle of life. After his defeat at the first battle of Shiloh, nearly every newspaper of both parties in the North, almost every member of Congress, and public sentiment everywhere demanded his removal. Friends of the President pleaded with him to give the command to some one else, for his own sake as well as for the good of the country. Lincoln listened for hours one night, speaking only at rare intervals to tell a pithy story, until the clock struck one. Then, after a long silence, he said "I can't spare this man. He fights." It was Lincoln's marvelous insight and sagacity that saved Grant from the storm of popular passion, and gave us the greatest hero of the Civil War.

When Fort Henry was taken, Halleck advised Grant to defend his position. Instead, he at once marched again. At Fort Donelson, whose commander after four days of hard fighting sent a flag of truce to ascertain on what terms a capitulation could be arranged. "Unconditional and immediate surrender," was the reply; "I propose to move immediately upon your works ; " but when night fell, he visited Buckner in the prisoner's tent, and said, "You must have lost everything; take my purse."

Grant never looked backward. Once, after several days of hard fighting without definite result, he called a council of war. One general described the route by which he would retreat, another thought it better to retire by a different road, and general after general told how he would withdraw, or fall back, or seek a more favorable position in the rear. At length all eyes were turned upon Grant, who had been a silent listener for hours. He rose, took a bundle of papers from an inside pocket, handed one to each general,, and said: " Gentlemen, at dawn you will execute those orders." Every paper gave definite directions for an advance, and with the morning sun the army moved forward to victory.

Astonished at a command to storm an important but strongly defended position, an officer rode back and said: “General, if I understand your order aright, it may involve the sacrifice of every man in my command." “I am glad, sir, that you understand my order aright," replied the silent general.

For thirty days he rained sledge-hammer blows upon Lee in the Wilderness, fighting by day, advancing by night. The country shuddered at such unheard-of carnage, and demanded his removal; but ever to his inquiring officers came the cool command, "By the left flank, forward," while he electrified ,the. nation by the homeward dispatch, “I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." When, with the Confederacy at his feet, the storm of vengeance seemed about to burst, his magnanimous words, "Let us have peace," fell like a benediction upon the hearts of victors and vanquished alike.

When Cannae was lost, and Hannibal was gathering in measures the rings of the Roman knights who had perished in the strife, the senate of Rome voted thanks to the defeated general, Consul Terentiius Varro, for not having despaired of the republic.

Pellisier, the Crimean chief of zouaves, became angry
with a sub-officer of cavalry, and struck him across the face with a whip. The man drew a pistol and pulled the trigger, but it missed-fire. "Fellow," said the grim chief coolly, "I order you a three days' arrest for not having your arms in better order."

Massena’s army of 18,000 men in Genoa had been reduced by fighting and famine to 8,000. They had killed and captured more than 15,000 Austrians, but their provisions were completely exhausted; starvation stared them in the face; the enemy outnumbered them four to one, and they seemed at the mercy of their opponents. General Ott demanded a discretionary surrender, but Massena replied: "My soldiers must be allowed to march out with colors flying, and arms and baggage; not as prisoners of war, but free to fight when and where we please. If you do not grant this, I will sally forth from Genoa sword in hand. With eight thousand famished men I will attack your camp, and I will fight till I cut my way through it." Ott knew the temper of the great soldier, and agreed to accept the terms if he would surrender himself, or if he would depart by sea so as not to be quickly joined by reinforcements. Massena’s only reply was: Take my terms, or I will cut my way through your army." Ott at last agreed, when Massena said: "I give you notice that ere fifteen days are passed I shall be once more in Genoa," and he kept his word.

Napoleon said of this man, who was orphaned infancy and cast upon the world to make his own way in life: " When defeated, Massena was always ready to fight a battle over again, as though he had been the conqueror."

“The battle is completely lost," said Desaix, looking at his watch, when consulted by Napoleon at Marengo; "but' it is only two o'clock, and we shall have time to gain another." He then made his famous cavalry charge, and won the field. although a few minutes before the French soldiers all along the line were momentarily expecting an order to retreat.

At the magazine of the Mare Island Navy Yard, California, sailors from the U. S. S. Boston were filling shells when suddenly the whole building went up in fire and smoke. All present were killed instantly. About a quarter of a mile distant a young girl was driving in a pony-cart, when the explosion occurred, and almost immediately afterward a doctor rushed from the naval hospital towards the scene of the disaster. Realizing the situation, she asked the doctor to jump into the cart, and galloped to the ruins. Other magazine buildings, in which shells were exploding every moment, had caught fire. Explosives were stored in those buildings in quantities sufficient to blow up Pike's Peak. Yet the doctor and the girl entered the pall of smoke amid the mangled dead. Collins, the watchman, half blinded and bewildered by a blow. from a fragment of timber, was groping his way from building to building, to prevent further disaster by shutting the iron doors and shutters. The girl coolly wrapped a bandage round his injured head, and then looked for other wounded until more help arrived. For this deed of Bessie McDougal, a general order of the Secretary of the Navy was read from the quarterdeck of every vessel in our service, tendering the thanks of the nation.

About sunset, July 6, 1881, a tempest burst with terrible fury in Iowa. In an hour every creek had overflowed its banks, and the Des Moines River had risen six feet; while every stream bore buildings, lumber, logs, and other debris madly towards the Mississippi. Kate Shelley, a girl of eighteen, stood at a window listening to the wild tumult without, when she happened to glance in the direction of Honey Creek railroad bridge. Through the deep darkness she saw the bright headlight of a locomotive move steadily along for a moment, and drop suddenly. Only her mother and a little brother and sister were at home, but Kate lighted an old lantern, donned a waterproof cloak, and hastened to Honey Creek. She found a turbulent torrent against whose swollen flood she could not stand. She climbed through cruel briars and bushes up the steep bank to the track, crept out to the last tie of the broken bridge, swung her lantern, and shouted at the top of her voice. A faint answer out of the yawning pit came from the engineer, the only survivor of the crew of a wrecked freight train. He said that he was safe for the time on some broken timbers, and urged her to go to Moingona Station, a mile away, to seek help for him and warn the fast express, then nearly due. Buffeted by the . gale, she struggled along to the high trestle, five hundred feet long, over the Des Moines, when a wild gust put out her light. She had no matches, so she crawled painfully over the dizzy structure, frequent lurid flashes making her shudder at the sight of the rushing waters far below. She reached the station, told her story, and fell unconscious just before the express came along. The legislature voted her a gold medal for bravery.

“Well," said Barnum to a friend in 1841, " I am going to buy the American Museum." "Buy it!" exclaimed the astonished friend, who knew that the showman 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 owned the Museum building, consulted numerous references all telling of "a good showman, who would do as he agreed," and accepted a proposition to give security for the purchaser. Mr. Olmstead was to appoint a money-taker at the door, and credit Barnum towards the purchase with all above expenses and an allowance of fifty dollars per month to support his wife and three children. Mrs. Barnum gladly assented to the arrangement and offered, if need be, to cut down the household expenses to a little more than a dollar a day. Some six months later Mr. Olmstead happened to enter the ticket-office at noon, and found Barnum eating for dinner a 'few slices of bread and some corned beef. " Is this the way you eat your dinner ? " he asked.

" I have not eaten a warm dinner since I bought the Museum, except on the Sabbath; 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 of the profits of the establishment.

" We discount only our own bills, and not those of private persons," said the cashier of the Bank of England, when a large bill was offered drawn by Anselin Rothschild of Frankfort, on Nathan Rothschild of London. ; "Private persons! " exclaimed Nathan, when told of the cashier's remark; “I will make these gentle men see what sort of private persons we are." Three weeks later he presented a five-pound note at the bank at, the opening of the office. The teller counted out five sovereigns, looking surprised that Baron Rothschild should have troubled himself about such a trifle.

The baron examined the coins one by one, weighing them in the balance, as he said. "'the law gave him the right to do," put them into a little 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 employees of his house similarly engaged, had occupied the tellers so busily in changing $1,050,000 worth of notes that no one else could receive attention. The bankers laughed,
but the next morning Rothschild appeared with his nine clerks and several trays to carry away the gold, remarking, "These gentlemen refuse to pay my bills; I have sworn not to keep theirs. They can pay at their leisure, only I notify them that I have enough to employ them for two months." The smiles faded from 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 was given in the newspapers that the Bank of England would pay Rothschild's bills as well as its own.

Three hundred thousand men had fought with sullen fury all day, but the French had been steadily repulsed until Macdonald was sent with 16,000 infantry to pierce the Austrian Centre. The archduke at once doubled his lines, brought up his reserve cavalry, and wheeled two hundred cannon in front of the threatened point. Straight towards such overwhelming odds, for about two miles, Macdonald led his melting ranks, before the astonished gaze of both armies, which seemed to have ceased fighting elsewhere to watch the march of such a forlorn hope; then, amid the concentrated fire of 100,00 Austrians, he halted a moment to reform his shattered columns. His eye fell upon only 1,500 living Frenchmen in his battalions, behind which trailed a long black line of the dead and dying, in which lay ten out of every eleven with whom he had set out.

Men of steel might well shrink from that fire of hell which blazed at their breasts, but Macdonald's watchword was ever duty, and his soldiers had caught the spirit of their chief. Only one look does he give to that windrow of death; and then, glancing from his falling heroes to the dense mass of foemen in front, the single word “forward" rings like a clarion call above the horrid din. Cheerily as at a holiday parade drums beat and trumpets peal; with elastic bound the remaining few leap over the smoking cannon, rush through charging squadrons of cavalry, and plunge into the serried columns of infantry beyond, which seem fairly pulverized at the moral shock of such an onset. Into the breach thus opened sweep the cuirassiers of the Old Guard, sent by Napoleon to support the brave Macdonald. The Austrians are wildly routed, Wagram is won, and the fate of Europe is sealed for four years.

The powder of the garrison of Fort Henry, was exhausted, on that summer day of 1777, and the Indians were pressing closer and closer, emboldened by the silence of the guns. Ebenezer Zane suddenly remembered that there was a keg in his house, some two hundred feet away, and so informed Colonel Shepard, in command. A volunteer was called for to attempt the forlorn task of going for it, exposed to close fire from the savages. Every man offered and contended eagerly for the honor, but Elizabeth Zane insisted upon going, saying that her life was less valuable for defense than that of a man. She was just graduated from a school in Philadelphia, and, with other young ladies, had been aiding the soldiers by casting bullets, making cartridges, and loading rifles. Consent was given reluctantly, and she passed quickly to her brother's house, the Indians watching in silent wonder. But when she was seen running back with the powder, a volley of bullets followed her, but without effect. The powder saved the fort, where now is Wheeling, West Virginia.

Amid difficulties and dangers before unknown, with hordes of savages around him, and winter at hand, La Salle, while exploring the Mississippi, brooded not " on the redoubled ruin that had befallen him - the desponding friends, the exulting foes, the wasted energies, the crushing load of debt, the stormy past, the dark and lowering future. His mind was of a different temper. He had no thought but to grapple with adversity, and out of the fabric of his ruin to rear the fabric of triumphant success."

“Hard pounding, gentlemen," said Wellington at Waterloo to his officers, "but we will see who can pound the longest." "It is very kind of them to 'sand' our letters for us," said young Junot coolly, as an Austrian shell scattered earth over the dispatch he was writing at the dictation of his commander-in-chief. The remark attracted Napoleon's attention and led to the promotion of the scrivener.

Erskine, the great advocate, was a hero at the bar; but when he entered the House of Commons, there was something in the fixed imperiousness and scorn of Pitt which made him feel inwardly weak and fluttered. Erskine had flashes of heroism; Pitt had consistent and persistent grit.

A Swedish boy fell out of a window and was badly hurt, but with clenched lips he kept back the cry of pain. The king, Gustavus Adolphus, who saw him fall, prophesied that the boy would make a man for an emergency. nd so he did, for he became the famous General Bauer.

The Spartan boy was dishonest enough to steal a fox, but proud enough to let the beast eat out his vitals rather than risk detection.

" There is room enough up higher," said Webster to a young man hesitating to study law because the profession was so crowded. This is true in every department of activity. The young man of today who would succeed must hold his ground and push hard. Whoever attempts to pass through the door to success will find it labeled in Large letters, "Push."

After a severe two hours' lesson from her father, Taglioni, the great Dauseuse, would fall exhausted. Attendants would then resuscitate her by sponging and friction, when, after a few hours' rest, she would be ready for an evening performance.

“I have often had occasion," says Washington Irvng, it to remark the fortitude with which women sustain the most overwhelming reverses of fortune. Those disasters which break down the spirit of a man, and prostrate him in the dust, seem to call forth all the energies of the softer sex, and give such intrepidity and elevation to their character that at times it approaches to sublimity."

The historian Aquetil refused to bend his knee .to Bonaparte. He chose rather the direst poverty, and was reduced to three sous a day. “I have still," said he, "two sous a day left for the conqueror of Marengo and Austerlitz. I do not need the emperor's help to die."

For hours John B. Gough tried to speak on temperance to the students at Oxford, amid shouting, hooting, cat-calls, derisive yells, impertinent and insulting questions, -and. every conceivable annoyance, not excepting personal violence. But he would not give up, and finally captured the good will of the young men by appealing to their sense of fair play in the novel proposition that speaker and audience should divide the time equally between them. "You shall conduct things according to your ideas for twenty minutes while I listen, and then I will talk for twenty minutes while you listen." He soon charmed them so much with his wonderful oratory that they were eager to give him their sure of time.

The perfection of grit is the power of saying "No," with emphasis that cannot be mistaken. Learn to meet hard times with a harder will, and more determined pluck. The nature which is all pine and straw is of no use in times of trial, we must have some oak and iron in us. The goddess of fame or of fortune has been won by many a poor boy who had no friends, no backing, or anything but pure grit and invincible purpose to commend him.

A sun-browned country youth called on Bishop Simpson, then president of Asbury University. His plain clothes led the bishop to ask what he had to depend upon. “ My two hands, sir," replied the boy who afterward became a United States Senator.

The barriers are not yet erected which shall shut out aspiring talent. Give a boy health and the alphabet, and it rests with him what his future shall be. Those who wait for luck and legacies never amount to much. Who ever knew of a man becoming wise or good by luck ? Those who have failed in life usually believe in luck, fate, or destiny. They will cite numerous examples of men who have made "lucky hits," or who have been “lucky dogs."

“ The chapter of accidents is the bible of the fool." Emerson says: “Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances: it was somebody's name, or he happened to be there at the time, or it was so then, and another day it would have been otherwise. Strong men believe in cause and effect. All successful men have agreed in one thing, - they were causationists. They believed that things went not by luck but by law; that there was not a weak or a cracked link in the chain that joins the first and last of things."

Goethe says that industry is nine tenths of genius, and adds: "It never occurs to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united."

"Diligence is the mother of good luck," said Franklin.

"I may here impart the secret of what is called good and bad luck," said Addison. "There are men who, supposing Providence to have an implacable spite against them, bemoan in the poverty of old age the misfortunes of their lives. Luck forever runs against them, and for others. One with a good profession lost his luck in the river, where he idled away his time a fishing. Another with a good trade perpetually burnt up his luck by his hot temper, which provoked all his
employees to leave him. Another with a lucrative business lost his luck by amazing diligence at every thing but his own business. Another who steadily followed his trade, as steadily followed the bottle. Another who was honest and constant to his work, erred by his perpetual misjudgment, he lacked discretion. Hundreds lose their luck by indorsing, by sanguine expectations, by trusting fraudulent men, and by dishonest gains.

A man never has good luck who has a bad wife. I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings and strictly honest, who complained of his bad luck. A good character, good habits, and iron industry are impregnable 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 the forenoon with his hands stuck into his pockets, the rim of his hat turned up, and the crown knocked in, I know he has had bad luck, - for the worst of all luck is to be a sluggard, a knave, or a tippler."

There is no luck, for all practical purposes, to him who is not striving, and whose senses are not all eagerly attent. What are called accidental discoveries are almost invariably made by those who are looking for something. A man incurs about as much risk of being struck by lightning as by accidental luck.

There is, perhaps, an element of luck 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 the efforts are directed and the energy with which they are prosecuted measure pretty accurately the luck contained in the results achieved. Apparent exceptions will be found to relate almost wholly to single undertakings, while - in the long run the rule will hold good. Two pearl-divers, equally expert, dive together and work with equal energy. One brings up a pearl, while the other returns empty-handed. But let both persevere and
at the end of five, ten, or twenty years it will be found that they succeeded almost in exact proportion to their skill and industry.

" With the aid or under the influence of pluck," says the London "Lancet," "it is possible not only to surmount what appear to be insuperable obstructions, but to defy and repel the ennuities of climate, adverse circumstances, and even disease. Many a life has been saved by the moral courage of a sufferer. It is not alone in bearing the pain of operations or the misery of confinement in a sick-room, this self-help becomes of vital moment, but in the monotonous tracking of a weary path, and the vigorous discharge of ordinary duty. How many a victim of incurable disease has lived on through years of suffering, patiently and resolutely hoping against hope, or, what is better, living down despair, until the virulence of a threatening malady has died out, and it has ceased to be destructive, although its physical characteristics remained!" Some patients absolutely refuse to die. What can a doctor do with such cases but let them live ? Even his pills will not kill them.

" The ruin which overtakes so many merchants," says Whipple, "is due not so much to their lack of business talent as to their lack of business nerve. How many lovable persons we see in trade, endowed with brilliant capacities, but cursed with yielding dispositions, - who are resolute in no business habits and fixed in no business principles, - who are prone to follow the instincts of a weak good nature against the ominous hints of a clear intelligence, now obliging this friend by indorsing an unsafe note, and then pleasing that neighbor by sharing his risk in a hopeless speculation, - and who, after all the capital they have earned by their industry and sagacity has been sunk in benevolent attempts to assist blundering or plundering incapacity, are doomed, in their bankruptcy, to, be the mark of bitter taunts from
growling creditors and insolent pity from a gossiping public."

"A somewhat varied experience of men has led me, the longer I live," says Huxley, "to set less value on mere cleverness; to attach more and more importance to industry and physical endurance. Indeed, I am much disposed to think that endurance is the most valuable quality of all; for industry, as the desire to work hard, does not come to much if a feeble frame is unable to respond to the desire.

No life is wasted unless it ends in sloth, dishonesty, or cowardice. No success is worthy of the name unless it is won by honest industry and brave breasting of the waves of fortune."

Has God abdicated ? Is the universe an infinite chaos, in which order has no throne ? Is law a fable ? Is life a Babel ? Is the world a Pandemonium? Then is there such a game of chance as men call luck. But as long as the smallest atom or the largest sun, the invisible animalcule or the most glorious archangel, the soul soaring from its tenement of clay or the sparrow falling to the earth, acknowledge equally His ruling power, Nature will play no blindman's-buff. If ten deaf, dumb, and blind men were placed in line in a ten acre lot, and left to wander until all who lived long enough were in line once more, the thing would be accomplished only at the death of the ninth man. Has luck ever made a fool speak words of wisdom; an ignoramus utter lectures on science; a dolt write an Odyssey, an Aeneid, a Paradise Lost, or a Hamlet; a loafer become a Girard or Astor, a Rothschild, Stewart, Vanderbilt, Field, Gould, or Rockefeller; a coward win at Yorktown, Wagram, Waterloo, or Richmond; a careless stonecutter carve an Apollo, a Minerva, a Venus de Medici, or a Greek Slave ? Does luck raise rich crops on the land of the sluggard, weeds and brambles or that of the industrious farmer ? Does luck make the drunkard sleek and attractive, and his home cheerful, - while the
temperate man looks haggard and suffers want and misery? Does luck starve honest labor, and pamper idleness ? Does luck put common sense at a discount, folly at a premium ? Does it cast intelligence into the gutter, and. raise ignorance to the skies.? Does it imprison virtue, and laud vice ? Did luck give Watt his engine, Franklin his captive lightning, Whitney his cotton-gin, Fulton his steamboat, Morse his telegraph; Blanchard his lathe, Howe his sewing-machine, Good year his rubber, Bell his telephone, Edison his phonograph ?

If you are told of the man who, worn out by a painful disorder, tried to commit suicide, but only opened an internal tumor, effecting a cure ; of the Persian condemned to lose his tongue, on whom a bungling operation merely removed an impediment of speech; of a painter who produced an effect long desired by throwing his brush at a picture in rage and despair; of a musician who, after repeated failures in trying to imitate a storm at sea, obtained the result desired by angrily running his hands together from the extremities of the keyboard, - bear in mind that even this "luck" came to men as the result of action, not inaction.

One merchant lost his store, his only property, in the Chicago fire. A competitor just across the street occupied a store which was saved. In consequence of the great demand for business blocks after the fire and the enormous increase of business, the latter became wealthy. Here, indeed, circumstances seemed to govern the relative success and failure of these two men; but they were circumstances over which neither had control. The one might have provided for the contingency of such loss by insuring his store and goods; but even in so doing he was liable to select companies that would be ruined by the enormous demand upon them, and so made unable to pay the insurance. The good fortune of the other seemed inevitable. Such a calamity as be-
fell the first, and such an opportunity as was afforded the second, independently of their volition in both instances, comes to not more than one man in ten thousand. As Juvenal says, "A. lucky man is rarer than a white crow."

Realizing that "unlucky people " are usually shiftless and lazy, Baron Rothschild and P. T. Barnum would have no business relations with them, for philosophical reasons. A. T. Stewart had a similar aversion, but was somewhat superstitious in his belief that it did not pay him to trade with them in any way. He said that if the first person to whom he sold goods from a newly opened lot was unlucky, he would lose on the entire lot. An old woman who sold apples in front of his little downtown store as a pretense to cover her real business of begging, so impressed him with the idea that she was his guardian angel that he personally moved her things in front of his new store, so anxious was he to have her there. Grover Cleveland also believed in luck. During his first candidacy for the office of President of the United States, he said: "I am certain to be elected: it's just my luck."

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

Stick to the thing and carry it through. Believe you were made for the place you fill, and that no one else can fill it as well. Put forth your whole energies. Be awake, electrify yourself; go forth to the task. Only once learn to carry a thing through in all its completeness and proportion, and you will become a hero. You will think better of yourself ; others will think better of you. The world in its very heart admires the sterns determined doer.

"I like the man who faces what he must

With step triumphant and a heart of cheer ;

Who fights the daily battle without fear ;

Sees his hopes fail, yet keeps unfaltering trust

That God is God ; that somehow, true and just,

His plans work out for mortals ; not a tear

Is shed when fortune, which the world holds dear,

Falls from his grasp; better, with love, a crust

Than living in dishonor; envies not,

Nor loses faith in man ; but does his best

Nor even murmurs at his humbler lot;

But with a smile and words of hope, gives zest

To every toiler; he alone is great,

Who by a life heroic conquers fate."

CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN

"Tis dogged that does it."

" The very reputation of being strong-willed, plucky and

indefatigable, is of priceless value. It cows enemies, and

dispels opposition to our undertakings."