CHAPTER XXI.

THE REWARD OF PERSISTENCE

Every noble work is at first impossible. - CARLYLE. The falling drops at last will wear the stone. - LUCRETIUS Victory belongs to the most persevering. -NAPOLEON.

Success in most things depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed - MONTESQUIEU.

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

I hate inconstancy - I loathe, detest, Abhor, condemn, abjure the mortal made Of such quicksilver clay that in his breast No permanent foundation can be laid.

BYRON. An enterprise, when fairly once begun, Should not be left till all that ought is won. SHAKESPEARE.

"Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel." The nerve that never relaxes, The eye that never blenches, The thought that never wanders, These are the masters of victory.

-BURKE.

In the lexicon of youth, which fate reserves for a bright manhood, there Is no such word as fail. -BULWER. "THE pit rose at me “exclaimed Edmund Kean in a wild tumult of emotion, as he rushed home to his trembling wife. "Mary, you shall ride in your carriage yet, and Charles shall go to Eton !" He had been so terribly In earnest with the study of his profession that he had at length made a mark on his generation.

He was a little dark man with a voice naturally harsh, but he determined, when young, to play the character of Sir Giles Overreach, in Massinger's drama, as no other man had ever played it. By a persistency that nothing seemed able to daunt, he so trained himself to play the character that his success, when it did come, was overwhelming, and all London was at his feet.

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

"I had no other books than heaven and earth, which are open to all," said Bernard Palissy, who left his home in the south of France in 1828, at the age of eighteen. Though only a glass-painter, he had the soul of an artist, and the sight of an elegant Italian cup disturbed his whole existence; and from that moment the determination to discover the enamel with which it was glazed possessed him like a passion. For months and years he tried all kinds of experiments to learn the materials of which the enamel was compounded. He built a furnace, which was a failure, and then a second, burning so much wood, spoiling so many drugs and pots of common earthenware, and losing so much time, that poverty stared him in the face, and he was forced to try his experiments in a common furnace, from lack of ability to buy fuel. Flat failure was the result, but he decided on the spot to begin all over again, and soon had three hundred pieces baking, one of which came out covered with beautiful enamel. To perfect his invention he next built a glass-furnace, carrying the bricks on his back. At last the time came for a trial; but, though he kept the heat up six days, his enamel would not melt. His money was all gone, but he borrowed some. and bought more pots and wood, and tried to get a better flux. When next he lighted his fire, he attained no result until his fuel was gone. Tearing off the palings of his garden fence, he fed them to the flames, but in vain. His furniture followed to no purpose. The shelves of his pantry were then broken up and thrown into the furnace; and the great burst of heat melted the enamel. The grand secret was learned. Persistence had triumphed again.

“For me, too," said Mendelssohn, “ the hour of rest will come; do the next thing."

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

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

man."

“ Whoever is resolved to excel in painting, or, indeed, in any other art," said Reynolds, "must bring all his mind to bear

upon that one object from the moment that he rises till he goes to bed."

"Those who are resolved to excel must go to their work, willing or unwilling, morning, noon, and night," said Reynolds; "they will find it no play, but very hard labor."

- I have no secret but hard work," said Turner the painter.

“ Young gentlemen," said Francis Wayland, "remember that nothing can stand days' work."

“My sons," said a dying farmer to his three indolent boys, "a great treasure lies hid in the estate which I am about to leave to you." “Where is it hid ? " asked the eager sons in chorus. "I am about to tell you," gasped the sick man;. "you will have to dig for it"- but here his spirit departed. The sons turned over every sod upon the estate, without finding any buried gold; but they learned to work, and when the fields were sown, an enormous harvest repaid their thorough digging.

“The man who is perpetually hesitating which of two things he will do first," said William Wirt, " will do neither. The man who resolves, but suffers his resolution to be changed by the first counter-suggestion of a friend-who fluctuates from opinion to opinion, from plan to plan, and veers like a weather-cock to every point of the compass, with every breath of caprice that blows, can never accomplish anything great or useful. Instead of being progressive in anything, he will be at best stationary, and, more probably, retrograde in all.

“Who first consults wisely, then resolves firmly, and then executes his purpose with inflexible perseverance, undismayed by those petty difficulties which daunt a weaker spirit-that man can advance to eminence in any line."

We are told that perseverance built the pyramids on Egypt's plains, erected the gorgeous temple at Jerusalem, inclosed in adamant the Chinese Empire, scaled the stormy, cloud-capped Alps, opened a highway through the watery wilderness of the Atlantic, leveled the forests of the new world, and reared in its stead a community of states and nations. Perseverance has wrought from the marble block the exquisite creations 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 many flying shuttles, harnessed thousands of iron steeds to as many freighted cars, and set them flying from town to town and nation to nation, tunneled mountains of granite, and annihilated space with the lightning's speed.

Perseverance has whitened the waters of the world with the sails of a hundred nations, navigated every sea and explored every land. Perseverance has reduced nature in her thousand forms to as many sciences, taught her laws, prophesied her future movements, measured her in trodden spaces, counted her myriad hosts of worlds,
and computed their distances, dimensions, and velocities.

Lofty mountains are wearing down by slow degrees. The ocean is gradually but slowly filling up; by deposits from its thousand rivers. The Niagara Falls have worn back seven miles through the hard lime. stone, over which they pour their thundering columns of water, and will by and by drain the great lake which feeds the boiling chasm. The Red Sea and whole regions of the Pacific Ocean are gradually filling up by the labors of a little insect, so small as to be almost invisible to the naked eye.

The slow penny is surer than the quick dollar. The slow trotter will out-travel the fleet racer. Genius darts, flutters, and tires ; but perseverance wears and wins. The all-day horse wins the race. The afternoon-man wears off the laurels. The last blow drives home the nail.”

"Are your discoveries often brilliant intuitions ?" asked a reporter of Thomas A. Edison. "Do they come to you while you are lying awake nights ? " “I never did anything worth doing by accident," was the reply, " nor did any of my inventions come indirectly through accident, except the phonograph. No, when I have fully decided that a result is worth getting I go ahead on it and make trial after trial until it comes. I have always kept strictly within the lines of commercially useful inventions. I have never had any time to put on electrical wonders, valuable simply as novelties to catch the popular fancy. I like it," continued the great inventor. " I don't know any other reason. You know some people like to collect stamps. Anything I have begun is always on my mind, and I am not easy while away from it until It is finished.".

A man who thus gives himself wholly to his work is certain to accomplish something; and if he have ability and common sense, his success will be great.

"Acting does not, like Dogberry's reading and writing, 'come by nature,' “ said the elder Kean; "with all the high qualities which go to the formation of a great exponent of the book of life (for so the stage may justly be called), it is impossible, totally impossible, to leap at once to fame. ' What wound did ever heal but by slow degrees ?' says our immortal author; and what man, say I, ever became an ' actor' without a long and sedulous apprenticeship ? I know that many think to step from behind a counter or jump from the high stool of an office to the boards, and take the town by storm in Richard or Othello, is as ' easy as lying.' Oh, the born idiots! they remind me of the halfpenny candles stuck in the windows on illumination-nights; they flicker and flutter their brief minute, and go out unheeded. Barn-storming, my lads, barn-storming, -that's the touchstone; by that I won my spurs; so did Garrick, Henderson, and Kemble ; and so, on the other side of the water, did my almost namesake Lekain and Talma."

How Bulwer wrestled with the fates to change his apparent destiny ! His first novel was a failure; his early poems were failures; and his youthful speeches provoked the ridicule of his opponents. But he fought his way to eminence through ridicule and defeat. Gibbon worked twenty, years on his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Noah Webster spent thirty-six years on his dictionary. What a sublime patience he showed in devoting a life to the collection and definition of words. George Bancroft spent twenty-six years on his "History of the United States." Newton rewrote his "Chronology of Ancient Nations" fifteen times. Titian wrote to Charles V.: "I send your majesty the Last Supper, after working on it almost daily for seven years." He worked on his Pietro Martyn eight years. George Stephenson was fifteen years perfecting his locomotive; Watt, twenty years on his condensing-engine.

Harvey labored eight long years before he published his discovery of the circulation of the blood. He was then called a crack-brained impostor by his fellow physicians. Amid abuse and ridicule he waited twenty-five years before his great discovery was recognized by the profession.

Newton discovered the law of gravitation before he was twenty-one, but one slight error in a measurement of the earth's circumference interfered with a demonstration of the correctness of his theory. Twenty years later he corrected the error, and showed that the planets roll in their orbits as a result of the same law which brings an apple to the ground.

Missionaries preached ten years in Madagascar before they obtained a convert. Dr. Judson labored five years in Burmah, and Dr. Morrison seven in China, be fore one native became a Christian. For fifteen years in Tahiti, and seventeen in Bengal, the work seemed all in vain.

An Italian music-teacher once told a pupil who wished to know what could be hoped for with study "If you will study a year I will teach you to sing well; if two years, you may excel. If you will practice the scale constantly for three years, I will make you the best tenor in Italy; if for four years, you may have the world at your feet"

Sothern, the great actor, said that the early part of his theatrical career was spent in getting dismissed for incompetency.

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

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

Patience is the guardian of faith, the preserver of peace, the cherisher of love, the teacher of humility. Patience governs the flesh, strengthens the spirit; sweetens the temper, stifles anger, extinguishes envy, subdues pride; she bridles the tongue, restrains the hand, tramples upon temptations, endures persecutions. Patience is the courage of virtue, enabling us to lessen pain of mind or body; it does not so much add to the number of our joys as it tends to diminish the number of our sufferings. Labor is still, and ever will be, the inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable.

Savages believe that, when they conquer an enemy, his spirit enters into them, and fights for them ever afterwards. So the spirit of our conquests enters us, and helps us to win the next victory.

Blucher may have been routed at Ligny yesterday, but today you hear the thunder of his guns at Waterloo hurling dismay and death among his former conquerors.

Opposing circumstances create strength. Opposition gives us greater power of resistance. To overcome one barrier gives us greater ability to overcome the next. Who will not befriend the persevering, energetic youth, the fearless man of industry ?

Be sure that your trade, your profession, your calling in life is a good one -one that God and goodness sanction ; then be true as steel to it. Think for it, plan for it, work for it, live for it; throw your mind, might, strength, heart, and soul into your actions for it, and success will crown you her favored child. No matter whether your object be great or small, whether it be the planting of a nation or a batch of potatoes, the same perseverance is necessary. Everybody admires an iron determination, and comes to the aid of him who directs it for good.

Don't damp fires and cool off boilers while but two thirds across the Atlantic; keep up the heat.

C. C. Coffin says that in February, 1492, a poor, gray-haired man, his head bowed with discouragement almost to the back of his mule, rode slowly out through the beautiful gateway of the Alhambra. From boyhood he had been haunted with the idea that the earth is round. He believed that the piece of carved wood picked up four hundred miles at sea, and the bodies of two men unlike any other human beings known, found on the shores of Portugal, had drifted from unknown lands in the west. But his last hope of obtaining aid for a voyage of discovery had failed. King John of Portugal, while pretending to think of helping him, had sent out secretly an expedition of his own.

He had begged bread, drawn maps and charts to keep him from starving; he had lost his wife; his friends had called him crazy, and forsaken him. The council of wise men, called by Ferdinand and Isabella, ridiculed his theory of reaching the east by sailing west.

"But the sun and moon are round," said Columbus, "why not the earth ?" “If the earth is a ball, what holds it up ? " asked the wise men. "What holds the sun and moon up?" inquired Columbus."But how can men walk with their heads hanging down, and their feet up, like flies on a ceiling ?" asked a learned doctor; "how-can trees grow with their roots in the air ? " "The water would run out of the ponds and we should fall off," said another philosopher. “This doctrine is contrary to the Bible, which says, The heavens are stretched out like a tent:' -of course it is flat; it is rank heresy to say it is round," said a priest.

He left the Alhambra in despair, intending to offerhis services to Charles VII., but he heard a voice calling his name. An old friend had told Isabella that it would add great renown to her reign at a trifling expense if what the sailor believed should prove true. “It shall be done," said Isabella, "I will pledge my jewels to raise the money. Call him back."

Columbus turned and with him turned the world. Not a sailor would go voluntarily; so the king and queen compelled them. Three days out in his vessels scarcely larger than fishing-schooners, the Pinta floated a signal of distress for a broken rudder. Terror seized the sailors, but Columbus calmed their fears with pictures of gold and precious stones from India. Two hundred miles west of the Canaries, the compass ceased to point to the North Star.

The sailors are ready to mutiny, but he tells them the North Star is not exactly north. Twenty-three hundred miles from home, though he tells them it is but seventeen hundred, a bush with berries floats by, land birds fly near, and they pick up a piece of wood curiously carved. On October 12, Columbus raised the banner of Castile over the western world.

What is difficulty for but to teach us the necessity of redoubled exertion ? danger but to give us fresh courage ? impossibilities but to inspire us to the enforcement of victory ? Longfellow has well illustrated this tenacity of purpose: -

“The divine insanity of noble minds, That never falters nor abates, But labors, and endures, and waits Till all that it foresees it finds, Or what it cannot find, creates."

"How hard I worked at that tremendous shorthand, and all improvement appertaining to it," said Dickens. " I will only add to what I have already written of my perseverance at this time of my life, and of a patient 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 any strength at all, that there, on looking back, I find the source of my success."

Cyrus W. Field had retired from business with a large fortune when he became possessed with the idea that by means of a cable laid upon the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, telegraphic communication could be established between Europe and America. He plunged into the undertaking with all the force of his being. The preliminary work included the construction of a telegraph line one thousand miles long, from New York to St. John's, Newfoundland. Through four hundred miles of almost unbroken forest they had to build a road as well as a telegraph line across Newfoundland. Another stretch of one hundred and forty miles across the island of Cape Breton involved a great deal of labor, as did the laying of a cable across the St. Lawrence.

By hard work he secured aid for his company from the British government, but in Congress he encountered such bitter opposition from a powerful lobby that his measure only had a majority of one in the Senate. The cable was loaded upon the Agamemnon, the flagship of the British fleet at Sebastopol, and upon the Niagara, a magnificent new- frigate of the United States Navy; but, when five miles of cable had been paid out, it caught in the machinery and parted. On the second trial, when two hundred miles at sea, the electric current was suddenly lost, and men paced the decks nervously and sadly, as if in the presence of death. Just as Mr. Field was about to give the order to cut the cable, the current returned as quickly and mysteriously as it had disappeared. The following night, when the ship was moving but four miles an hour and the cable running out at the rate of six miles, the brakes were applied too suddenly just as the steamer gave a heavy lurch, breaking the cable.

Field was not the man to give up. Seven hundred miles more of cable were ordered, and a man of great skill was set to work to devise a better machine for paying out the long line. American and British inventors united in making a machine. At length in mid-ocean the two halves of the cable were spliced and the steamers began to separate, the one headed for Ireland, the other for Newfoundland, each running out the precious thread, which, it was hoped, would bind two continents together. Before the vessels were three miles apart, the cable, parted. Again it was spliced, but when the ships were eighty miles apart, the current was lost. A third time the cable was spliced and about two hundred miles paid out, when it parted some twenty feet from the Agamemnon, and the vessels returned to the coast of Ireland.

Directors were disheartened, the public skeptical, capitalists were shy, and but for the indomitable energy and persuasiveness of Mr. Field, who worked day and night almost without food or sleep, the whole project would have been abandoned. Finally a third attempt was made, with such success that he whole cable was laid without a break, and several messages were flashed through nearly seven hundred leagues of ocean, when suddenly the current ceased.

Faith now seemed dead except in the breast of Cyrus W. Field, and one or two friends, yet with such persistence did they work that they persuaded men to furnish capital for another trial even against what seemed their better judgment. A new and superior cable was loaded upon the Great Eastern, which steamed slowly out to sea, paying out as she advanced. Everything worked to a charm until within six hundred miles of Newfoundland, when the cable snapped and sank. After several fruitless attempts to raise it, the enterprise was abandoned for a year. Not discouraged by all these difficulties, Mr. Field went to work with a will, organized a new company,
and made a new cable far superior to anything before used, and on July 13, 1866, was begun the trial which ended with the following message sent to New York:

- “HEART'S CONTENT, July 27. “ We arrived here at nine o'clock this morning. All well. Thank God! the cable is laid and is in perfect working order.-CYRUS W. FIELD." The old cable was picked up, spliced, and continued to Newfoundland, and the two are still working, with good prospects for usefulness for many years.

In Revelation we read: "He that overcometh, I will give him to sit down with me on my throne."

Successful men, it is said, owe more to their perseverance than to their natural powers, their friends, or the favorable circumstances around them. Genius will falter by the side of labor, great powers will yield to great industry. Talent is desirable, but perseverance is more so.

“ How long did it take you to learn to play ? " asked a young man of Geradini. -"Twelve hours a day for twenty years," replied the great violinist.

Lyman Beecher's father, when asked how long it took him to write his celebrated sermon on the "Government of God," replied, "About forty years."

A Chinese student, discouraged by repeated failures, had thrown away his book in despair, when he saw a poor woman rubbing an iron bar on a stone to make a needle. This example of patience sent him back to his studies with a new determination, and he became one of the three greatest scholars of China.

“ Generally speaking," said Sydney Smith, "the life of all truly great men has been a life of intense and incessant labor. They have commonly passed the first half of life in the gross darkness of indigent humility, - overlooked, mistaken, condemned by weaker men, thinking while others slept, reading while others rioted, feeling something within them that told them they should not always be kept down among the dregs of the world. And then, when their time has come, and some little accident has given them their first occasion, they have burst out into the light and glory of public life, rich with the spoils of time, and mighty in all the labors and struggles of the mind."

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

When an East India boy is learning archery, he is compelled to practice three months drawing the string to his ear before he is allowed to touch an arrow.

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

Lady Franklin labored incessantly for twelve long years to rescue her husband from the polar seas. Nothing could daunt her or induce her to abandon the hopeless search until she had proven that he died after traversing before unknown seas seeking a northwest passage.

Benjamin Franklin had this tenacity of purpose in a wonderful degree. When he started in the printing business in Philadelphia, he carried his material through the streets on a wheelbarrow. He hired one room for his office, work-room, and sleeping-room. He found a formidable rival in the city and invited him to his room. Pointing to a piece of bread from which he had just eaten his dinner, he said: “ Unless you can live cheaper than I can you cannot starve me out."

All are familiar with the misfortune of Carlyle while writing his " History of the French Revolution." After the first volume was ready for the press, he loaned the manuscript to a neighbor who left it lying on the floor, and the servant girl took it to kindle the fire. It was a bitter disappointment, but Carlyle was not the man to give up. After many months of poring over hundreds of volumes of authorities and scores of manuscripts, he reproduced that which had burned in a few minutes.

Audubon, the naturalist, had spent two years with his gun and note-book in the forests of America, making drawings of birds. He nailed them all up securely in a box and went off on a vacation. When he returned he opened the box only to find a nest of Norwegian rats in his beautiful drawings. Every one was ruined. It was a terrible disappointment, but Audubon took his gun and note-book and started for the forest. He reproduced his drawings even better than those he had before.

Robert Ainsworth worked many years on a Latin dictionary. His wife became angry because he robbed her of his time, and burned all his manuscript. He rewrote it, but never forgave his wife.

A merchant went to a sculptor and wanted to hire him by the day to carve a statue. "Wretch," was the reply, “I have been twenty-five years learning how to make that statue in twenty-five days."

When Dickens was asked to read one of his selections in public he replied that he had not time, for he was in the habit of reading the same piece every day for six months before reading it in public. "My own invention," he says, " such as it is, I assure you, would never have served me as it has but for the habit of commonplace, humble, patient, toiling attention."

Addison amassed three volumes of manuscript before he began the " Spectator."

Every one admires a determined, persistent man. Marcus Morton ran sixteen times for governor of Massachusetts. At last his opponents voted for him from admiration of his pluck, and he was elected by one majority. Lord Eldon copied the whole of Coke upon Littleton twice over because too poor to buy books.
Gibbon wrote his memoirs over nine times. Such persistence always triumphs.

A teacher was drilling some boys on the hard verses in the third chapter of Daniel. When they read the chapter the third time an easily discouraged scholar came to the names Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego; stopped short, and in a most discouraged voice said, "Teacher, there's them three fellers again." We all know plenty of men who seem to get along pretty well until they come to "them three fellers again," when they stop and will go no further until the obstruction is removed.

Webster declared to the teachers at Phillips Academy that he never could declaim before the school. He said he committed piece after piece and rehearsed them in his room, but when he heard his name called in the academy and all eyes turned towards, him the room became dark and everything he ever knew fled from his brain; but Webster became the great orator of America. Indeed, it is doubtful whether Demosthenes himself surpassed Webster's great reply to Hayne in the United States Senate. Webster's tenacity was illustrated by a circumstance which occurred in the academy. The principal punished him for shooting pigeons by compelling him to commit one hundred lines of Vergil. He knew the principal was to take a certain train that afternoon, so he went to his room and committed seven hundred lines. He went to recite them to the principal just before train time. After repeating the hundred lines he kept right on until he had recited two hundred. The principal kept looking at his watch and grew nervous, but Webster kept right on. The principal finally stopped him and asked him how many more he had learned. "About five hundred more,". said Webster, and kept on. "You can have the rest of the day for pigeon shooting," said the principal. ; "

Great writers have ever been noted for their tenacity of purpose. Their works have not been flung off from minds aglow with genius, but have been elaborated and elaborated into grace and beauty, until every trace of their efforts has been obliterated. Bishop Butler worked twenty years incessantly on his "Analogy," and even then was so dissatisfied that he wanted to burn it. Rousseau says he obtained the ease and grace of his style only by ceaseless inquietude, by endless blotches and erasures. Vergil worked eleven years on the Aeneid. The note-books of great men like Hawthorne and Emerson are tell-tales of the enormous drudgery, of the years put into a book which may be read in an hour. Montesquieu was twenty-five years writing his "Esprit des Lois," yet you can read it in sixty minutes.

Adam Smith spent ten years on his " Wealth of Nations."

A rival playwright once laughed at Euripides for spending three days on three lines, when he had written five hundred lines. "But your five hundred lines in three days will be dead and forgotten, while my, three lines will live forever," he replied.

Ariosto wrote his "Description of a Tempest" sixteen different ways. He spent ten years on his "Orlando Furioso," and only sold one hundred copies at fifteen pence each. The proof of Burke's " Letters to a Noble Lord" (one of the sublimest things in all literature) went back to the publisher so changed and blotted with corrections that the printer absolutely refused to correct it, and it was entirely reset. Adam Pucker spent eighteen years on the "Light of Nature." A great naturalist spent eight years on the " Anatomy of the Day Fly." Thoreau's New England pastoral, "A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers," was an entire failure. Seven hundred of the one thousand copies printed were returned from the publis hers. Thoreau wrote in his diary: “I have some nine hundred volumes in my library, seven hundred of which I wrote Myself." Yet he says he took up his pen with as much determination as ever.

The rolling stone gathers no moss. The persistent tortoise outruns the swift but fickle hare. An hour a day for twelve years more than equals the time given to study in a four years' course at a high school. The reading and re-reading of a single volume has been the making of many a man.

"Patience," says Bulwer, "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."

Want of constancy is the cause of many a failure, making the millionaire of today. a beggar tomorrow. Show me a really great triumph that is not the reward of persistence. One of the paintings which made Titian famous was on his easel eight years; another, seven. How came popular writers famous ? By writing for years without any pay at all; by writing hundreds of pages as mere practice-work; by working like galley-slaves at literature for half a lifetime with no other compensation than - fame. " Never despair," says Burke ; " but if you do, work on in despair." " He who has put forth his total strength in fit actions," says Emerson, " has the richest return of wisdom."

" There is also another class," says a moralist, chiefly among the fair sex, who are incapable of making up their minds, even with the help of others; who change and change and repent again, and return to their first resolution, and then regret that they have done so when too late. They hesitate between a walk and a drive, between going in one direction or another, and fifty other things equally immaterial; and always end the matter by doing what they fancy, at any rate, is the least agreeable and eligible of the two. Of course this disposition, shown in these trifles, will be shown in more important matters; and a most distressing and unfortunate

disposition it is, both for themselves and those around them. Now, the only remedy for such a turn of mind is resolutely

to keep to the first decision, whatever it may be, without dwelling on its advantages or disadvantages, and allowing any

useless regrets after the thing is done; and even if a mistake is often made at the outset, from want of the habit of ready

and unwavering judgment, it will be far less mischievous than weak and wretched indecision."

Success is not measured by what a man accomplishes, but by the opposition he has encountered, and the courage with

which he has maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds, as Alexander learned by defeat the art of war.

The head of the god Hercules is represented as covered with a lion's skin with claws joined under the chin, to show that

when we have conquered our misfortunes, they become our helpers. Oh, the glory of an unconquerable will

Yet nerve thy spirit to the proof, And blench not at thy chosen lot; The timid good may stand aloof, The sage may frown, - yet faint thou not Nor heed the shaft too surely cast, The foul and hissing bolt of scorn ; For with thy side shall dwell at last, The victory of endurance born.

BRYANT,

The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night. We have not wings, we cannot soar ; But we have feet to scale and climb, By slow degrees, by more and more, The cloudy summit of our time.

LONGFELLOW