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by Marden vice Harden

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Title: Stories from Life

Author: Marden vice Harden

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ECLECTIC SCHOOL READINGS

STORIES FROM LIFE

A BOOK FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

BY ORISON SWETT MARDEN

AUTHOR OF "ARCHITECTS OF FATE," "RUSHING TO THE FRONT," "WINNING
OUT," ETC, AND EDITOR OF "SUCCESS"





PREFACE


To make a life, as well as to make a living, is one of the supreme
objects for which we must all struggle. The sooner we realize what
this means, the greater and more worthy will be the life which we
shall make.

In putting together the brief life stories and incidents from
great lives which make up the pages of this little volume, the
writer's object has been to show young people that, no matter how
humble their birth or circumstances, they may make lives that will
be held up as examples to future generations, even as these
stories show how boys, handicapped by poverty and the most
discouraging surroundings, yet succeeded so that they are held up
as models to the boys of to-day.

No boy or girl can learn too early in life the value of time and
the opportunities within reach of the humblest children of the
twentieth century to enable them to make of themselves noble men
and women.

The stories here presented do not claim to be more than mere
outlines of the subjects chosen, enough to show what brave souls
in the past, souls animated by loyalty to God and to their best
selves, were able to accomplish in spite of obstacles of which the
more fortunately born youths of to-day can have no conception.

It should never be forgotten, however, in the strivings of
ambition, that, while every one should endeavor to raise himself
to his highest power and to attain to as exalted and honorable a
position as his abilities entitle him to, his first object should
be to make a noble life.

The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of Miss Margaret
Connolly in the preparation of this volume.

O.S.M.





CONTENTS


TO-DAY
"THE MILL BOY OF THE SLASHES"
THE GREEK SLAVE WHO WON THE OLIVE CROWN
TURNING POINTS IN THE LIFE OF A HERO:
   I. THE FIRST TURNING POINT
  II. A BORN LEADER
 III. "FARRAGUT IS THE MAN"
HE AIMED HIGH AND HIT THE MARK
THE EVOLUTION OF A VIOLINIST
THE LESSON OF THE TEAKETTLE
HOW THE ART OF PRINTING WAS DISCOVERED
SEA FEVER AND WHAT IT LED TO
GLADSTONE FOUND TIME TO BE KIND
A TRIBUNE OF THE PEOPLE
THE MIGHT OF PATIENCE
THE INSPIRATION OF GAMBETTA
ANDREW JACKSON: THE BOY WHO "NEVER WOULD GIVE UP"
SIR HUMPHRY DAVY'S GREATEST DISCOVERY, MICHAEL FARADAY
THE TRIUMPH OF CANOVA
FRANKLIN'S LESSON ON TIME VALUE
FROM STORE BOY TO MILLIONAIRE
"I WILL PAINT OR DIE!"
THE CALL THAT SPEAKS IN THE BLOOD
WASHINGTON'S YOUTHFUL HEROISM
A COW HIS CAPITAL
THE BOY WHO SAID "I MUST"
THE HIDDEN TREASURE
LOVE TAMED THE LION
"THERE IS ROOM ENOUGH AT THE TOP"
THE UPLIFT OF A SLAVE BOY'S IDEAL
"TO THE FIRST ROBIN"
THE "WIZARD" AS AN EDITOR
HOW GOOD FORTUNE CAME TO PIERRE
"IF I REST, I RUST"
A BOY WHO KNEW NOT FEAR
HOW STANLEY FOUND LIVINGSTONE
THE NESTOR OF AMERICAN JOURNALISTS
THE MAN WITH AN IDEA
"BERNARD OF THE TUILERIES"
HOW THE "LEARNED BLACKSMITH" FOUND TIME
THE LEGEND OF WILLIAM TELL
"WESTWARD HO!"
THREE GREAT AMERICAN SONGS AND THEIR AUTHORS
   I. THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER
  II. AMERICA
 III. THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC
TRAINING FOR GREATNESS
THE MARBLE WAITETH





STORIES FROM LIFE





TO-DAY

    For the structure that we raise,
      Time is with materials filled;
    Our to-days and yesterdays
      Are the blocks with which we build.

                              Longfellow.


To-day! To-day! It is ours, with all its magic possibilities of
being and doing. Yesterday, with its mistakes, misdeeds, lost
opportunities, and failures, is gone forever. With the morrow we
are not immediately concerned. It is but a promise yet to be
fulfilled. Hidden behind the veil of the future, it may dimly
beckon us, but it is yet a shadowy, unsubstantial vision, one that
we, perhaps, never may realize. But to-day, the Here, the Now,
that dawned upon us with the first hour of the morn, is a reality,
a precious possession upon the right use of which may depend all
our future of happiness and success, or of misery and failure; for

"This day we fashion Destiny, our web of Fate we spin."

Lest he should forget that Time's wings are swift and noiseless,
and so rapidly bear our to-days to the Land of Yesterday, John
Ruskin, philosopher, philanthropist, and tireless worker though he
was, kept constantly before his eyes on his study table a large,
handsome block of chalcedony, on which was graven the single word
"To-day." Every moment of this noble life was enriched by the
right use of each passing moment.

A successful merchant, whose name is well-known throughout our
country, very tersely sums up the means by which true success may
be attained. "It is just this," he says: "Do your best every day,
whatever you have in hand."

This simple rule, if followed in sunshine and in storm, in days of
sadness as well as days of gladness, will rear for the builder a
Palace Beautiful more precious than pearls of great price, more
enduring than time.





"THE MILL BOY OF THE SLASHES"


A picturesque, as well as pathetic figure, was Henry Clay, the
little "Mill Boy of the Slashes," as he rode along on the old
family horse to Mrs. Darricott's mill. Blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked,
and bare-footed, clothed in coarse shirt and trousers, and a
time-worn straw hat, he sat erect on the bare back of the horse,
holding, with firm hand, the rope which did duty as a bridle. In
front of him lay the precious sack, containing the grist which was
to be ground into meal or flour, to feed the hungry mouths of the
seven little boys and girls who, with the widowed mother, made up
the Clay family.

It required a good deal of grist to feed so large a family,
especially when hoecake was the staple food, and it was because of
his frequent trips to the mill, across the swampy region called
the "Slashes," that Henry was dubbed by the neighbors "The Mill
Boy of the Slashes."

The lad was ambitious, however, and, very early in life, made up
his mind that he would win for himself a more imposing title. He
never dreamed of winning world-wide renown as an orator, or of
exchanging his boyish sobriquet for "The Orator of Ashland." But
he who forms high ideals in youth usually far outstrips his first
ambition, and Henry had "hitched his wagon to a star."

This awkward country boy, who was so bashful, and so lacking in
self-confidence that he hardly dared recite before his class in
the log schoolhouse, DETERMINED TO BECOME AN ORATOR.

Henry Clay, the brilliant lawyer and statesman, the American
Demosthenes who could sway multitudes by his matchless oratory,
once said, "In order to succeed a man must have a purpose fixed,
then let his motto be VICTORY OR DEATH." When Henry Clay, the poor
country boy, son of an unknown Baptist minister, made up his mind
to become an orator, he acted on this principle. No discouragement
or obstacle was allowed to swerve him from his purpose. Since the
death of his father, when the boy was but five years old, he had
carried grist to the mill, chopped wood, followed the plow
barefooted, clerked in a country store,--did everything that a
loving son and brother could do to help win a subsistence for the
family.

In the midst of poverty, hard work, and the most pitilessly
unfavorable conditions, the youth clung to his resolve. He learned
what he could at the country schoolhouse, during the time the
duties of the farm permitted him to attend school. He committed
speeches to memory, and recited them aloud, sometimes in the
forest, sometimes while working in the cornfield, and frequently
in a barn with a horse and an ox for his audience.

In his fifteenth year he left the grocery store where he had been
clerking to take a position in the office of the clerk of the High
Court of Chancery. There he became interested in law, and by
reading and study began at once to supplement the scanty education
of his childhood. To such good purpose did he use his
opportunities that in 1797, when only twenty years old, he was
licensed by the judges of the court of appeals to practice law.

When he moved from Richmond to Lexington, Kentucky, the same year
to begin practice for himself, he had no influential friends, no
patrons, and not even the means to pay his board. Referring to
this time years afterward, he said, "I remember how comfortable I
thought I should be if I could make one hundred pounds Virginia
money (less than five hundred dollars) per year; and with what
delight I received the first fifteen-shilling fee."

Contrary to his expectations, the young lawyer had "immediately
rushed into a lucrative practice." At the age of twenty-seven he
was elected to the Kentucky legislature. Two years later he was
sent to the United States Senate to fill out the remainder of the
term of a senator who had withdrawn. In 1811 he was elected to
Congress, and made Speaker of the national House of
Representatives. He was afterward elected to the United States
Senate in the regular way.

Both in Congress and in the Senate Clay always worked for what he
believed to be the best interests of his country. Ambition, which
so often causes men to turn aside from the paths of truth and
honor, had no power to tempt him to do wrong. He was ambitious to
be president, but would not sacrifice any of his convictions for
the sake of being elected. Although he was nominated by his party
three times, he never became president. It was when warned by a
friend that if he persisted in a certain course of political
conduct he would injure his prospects of being elected, that he
made his famous statement, "I would rather be right than be
president."

Clay has been described by one of his biographers as "a brilliant
orator, an honest man, a charming gentleman, an ardent patriot,
and a leader whose popularity was equaled only by that of Andrew
Jackson."

Although born in a state in which wealth and ancient ancestry were
highly rated, he was never ashamed of his birth or poverty. Once
when taunted by the aristocratic John Randolph with his lowly
origin, he proudly exclaimed, "I was born to no proud paternal
estate. I inherited only infancy, ignorance, and indigence."

He was born in Hanover County, Virginia, on April 12, 1777, and
died in Washington, June 29, 1852. With only the humble
inheritance which he claimed--"infancy, ignorance, and indigence"
--Henry Clay made himself a name that wealth and a long line of
ancestry could never bestow.





THE GREEK SLAVE WHO WON THE OLIVE CROWN


The teeming life of the streets has vanished; the voices of the
children have died away into silence; the artisan has dropped his
tools, the artist has laid aside his brush, the sculptor his
chisel. Night has spread her wings over the scene. The queen city
of Greece is wrapped in slumber.

But, in the midst of that hushed life, there is one who sleeps
not, a worshiper at the shrine of art, who feels neither fatigue
nor hardship, and fears not death itself in the pursuit of his
object. With the fire of genius burning in his dark eyes, a youth
works with feverish haste on a group of wondrous beauty.

But why is this master artist at work, in secret, in a cellar
where the sun never shone, the daylight never entered? I will tell
you. Creon, the inspired worker, the son of genius, is a slave,
and the penalty of pursuing his art is death.

When the Athenian law debarring all but freemen from the exercise
of art was enacted, Creon was at work trying to realize in marble
the vision his soul had created. The beautiful group was growing
into life under his magic touch when the cruel edict struck the
chisel from his fingers.

"O ye gods!" groans the stricken youth, "why have ye deserted me,
now, when my task is almost completed? I have thrown my soul, my
very life, into this block of marble, and now--"

Cleone, the beautiful dark-haired sister of the sculptor, felt the
blow as keenly as her brother, to whom she was utterly devoted. "O
immortal Athene! my goddess, my patron, at whose shrine I have
daily laid my offerings, be now my friend, the friend of my
brother!" she prayed.

Then, with the light of a new-born resolve shining in her eyes,
she turned to her brother, saying:--

"The thought of your brain shall live. Let us go to the cellar
beneath our house. It is dark, but I will bring you light and
food, and no one will discover our secret. You can there continue
your work; the gods will be our allies."

It is the golden age of Pericles, the most brilliant epoch of
Grecian art and dramatic literature.

The scene is one of the most memorable that has ever been enacted
within the proud city of Athens.

In the Agora, the public assembly or market place, are gathered
together the wisdom and wit, the genius and beauty, the glory and
power, of all Greece.

Enthroned in regal state sits Pericles, president of the assembly,
soldier, statesman, orator, ruler, and "sole master of Athens." By
his side sits his beautiful partner, the learned and queenly
Aspasia. Phidias, one of the greatest sculptors, if not the
greatest the world has known, who "formed a new style
characterized by sublimity and ideal beauty," is there. Near him
is Sophocles, the greatest of the tragic poets. Yonder we catch a
glimpse of a face and form that offers the most striking contrast
to the manly beauty of the poet, but whose wisdom and virtue have
brought Athens to his feet. It is the "father of philosophy,"
Socrates. With his arm linked in that of the philosopher, we see--
but why prolong the list? All Greece has been bidden to Athens to
view the works of art.

The works of the great masters are there. On every side paintings
and statues, marvelous in detail, exquisite in finish, challenge
the admiration of the crowd and the criticism of the rival artists
and connoisseurs who throng the place. But even in the midst of
masterpieces, one group of statuary so far surpasses all the
others that it rivets the attention of the vast assembly.

"Who is the sculptor of this group?" demands Pericles. Envious
artists look from one to the other with questioning eyes, but the
question remains unanswered. No triumphant sculptor comes forward
to claim the wondrous creation as the work of his brain and hand.
Heralds, in thunder tones, repeat, "Who is the sculptor of this
group?" No one can tell. It is a mystery. Is it the work of the
gods? or--and, with bated breath, the question passes from lip to
lip, "Can it have been fashioned by the hand of a slave?"

Suddenly a disturbance arises at the edge of the crowd. Loud
voices are heard, and anon the trembling tones of a woman. Pushing
their way through the concourse, two officers drag a shrinking
girl, with dark, frightened eyes, to the feet of Pericles. "This
woman," they cry, "knows the sculptor; we are sure of this; but
she will not tell his name."

Neither threats nor pleading can unlock the lips of the brave
girl. Not even when informed that the penalty of her conduct was
death would she divulge her secret. "The law," says Pericles, "is
imperative. Take the maid to the dungeon."

Creon, who, with his sister, had been among the first to find his
way to the Agora that morning, rushed forward, and, flinging
himself at the ruler's feet, cried "O Pericles! forgive and save
the maid. She is my sister. I am the culprit. The group is the
work of my hands, the hands of a slave."

An intense silence fell upon the multitude, and then went up a
mighty shout,--"To the dungeon, to the dungeon with the slave."

"As I live, no!" said Pericles, rising. "Not to the dungeon, but
to my side bring the youth. The highest purpose of the law should
be the development of the beautiful. The gods decide by that group
that there is something higher in Greece than an unjust law. To
the sculptor who fashioned it give the victor's crown."

And then, amid the applause of all the people, Aspasia placed the
crown of olives on the youth's brow, and tenderly kissed the
devoted sister who had been the right hand of genius.





TURNING POINTS IN THE LIFE OF A HERO

I. THE FIRST TURNING POINT


David Farragut was acting as cabin boy to his father, who was on
his way to New Orleans with the infant navy of the United States.
The boy thought he had the qualities that make a man. "I could
swear like an old salt," he says, "could drink as stiff a glass of
grog as if I had doubled Cape Horn, and could smoke like a
locomotive. I was great at cards, and was fond of gambling in
every shape. At the close of dinner one day," he continues, "my
father turned everybody out of the cabin, locked the door, and
said to me, 'David, what do you mean to be?'

"'I mean to follow the sea,' I said.

'"Follow the sea!' exclaimed father, 'yes, be a poor, miserable,
drunken sailor before the mast, kicked and cuffed about the world,
and die in some fever hospital in a foreign clime!'

"'No, father,' I replied, 'I will tread the quarterdeck, and
command as you do.'

"'No, David; no boy ever trod the quarterdeck with such principles
as you have and such habits as you exhibit. You will have to
change your whole course of life if you ever become a man.'

"My father left me and went on deck. I was stunned by the rebuke,
and overwhelmed with mortification. 'A poor, miserable, drunken
sailor before the mast, kicked and cuffed about the world, and die
in some fever hospital!' 'That's my fate, is it? I'll change my
life, and _I_ WILL CHANGE IT AT ONCE. I will never utter another
oath, never drink another drop of intoxicating liquor, never
gamble,' and, as God is my witness," said the admiral, solemnly,
"I have kept these three vows to this hour."





II. A BORN LEADER


The event which proved David Glasgow Farragut's qualities as a
leader happened before he was thirteen.

He was with his adopted father, Captain Porter, on board the
Essex, when war was declared with England in 1812. A number of
prizes were captured by the Essex, and David was ordered by
Captain Porter to take one of the captured vessels, with her
commander as navigator, to Valparaiso. Although inwardly quailing
before the violent-tempered old captain of the prize ship, of
whom, as he afterward confessed, he was really "a little afraid,"
the boy assumed the command with a fearless air.

On giving his first order, that the "main topsail be filled away,"
the trouble began. The old captain, furious at hearing a command
given aboard his vessel by a boy not yet in his teens, replied to
the order, with an oath, that he would shoot any one who dared
touch a rope without his orders. Having delivered this mandate, he
rushed below for his pistols.

The situation was critical. If the young commander hesitated for a
moment, or showed the least sign of submitting to be bullied, his
authority would instantly have fallen from him. Boy as he was,
David realized this, and, calling one of the crew to him,
explained what had taken place, and repeated his order. With a
hearty "Aye, aye, sir!" the sailor flew to the ropes, while the
plucky midshipman called down to the captain that "if he came on
deck with his pistols, he would be thrown overboard."

David's victory was complete. During the remainder of the voyage
none dared dispute his authority. Indeed his coolness and
promptitude had won for him the lasting admiration of the crew.





III. "FARRAGUT IS THE MAN"


The great turning point which placed Farragut at the head of the
American navy was reached in 1861, when Virginia seceded from the
Union, and he had to choose between the cause of the North and
that of the South. He dearly loved his native South, and said,
"God forbid that I should have to raise my hand against her," but
he determined, come what would, to "stick to the flag."

So it came about that when, in order to secure the control of the
Mississippi, the national government resolved upon the capture of
New Orleans, Farragut was chosen to lead the undertaking. Several
officers, noted for their loyalty, good judgment, and daring, were
suggested, but the Secretary of the Navy said, "Farragut is the
man."

The opportunity for which all his previous noble life and
brilliant services had been a preparation came to him when he was
sixty-one years old. The command laid upon him was "the certain
capture of the city of New Orleans." "The department and the
country," so ran his instructions, "require of you success. ... If
successful, you open the way to the sea for the great West, never
again to be closed. The rebellion will be riven in the center, and
the flag, to which you have been so faithful, will recover its
supremacy in every state."

On January 9, 1862, Farragut was appointed to the command of the
western gulf blockading squadron. "On February 2," says the
National Cyclopedia of American Biograph, "he sailed on the steam
sloop Hartford from Hampton Roads, arriving at the appointed
rendezvous, Ship Island, in sixteen days. His fleet, consisting of
six war steamers, sixteen gunboats, twenty-one mortar vessels,
under the command of Commodore David D. Porter, and five supply
ships, was the largest that had ever sailed under the American
flag. Yet the task assigned him, the passing of the forts below
New Orleans, the capture of the city, and the opening of the
Mississippi River through its entire length was one of difficulty
unprecedented in the history of naval warfare."

Danger or death had no terror for the brave sailor. Before setting
out on his hazardous enterprise, he said: "If I die in the
attempt, it will only be what every officer has to expect. He who
dies in doing his duty to his country, and at peace with his God,
has played the drama of life to the best advantage."

The hero did not die. He fought and won the great battle, and thus
executed the command laid upon him,--"the certain capture of the
city of New Orleans." The victory was accomplished with the loss
of but one ship, and 184 men killed and wounded,--"a feat in naval
warfare," says his son and biographer, "which has no precedent,
and which is still without a parallel, except the one furnished by
Farragut himself, two years later, at Mobile."





HE AIMED HIGH AND HIT THE MARK

"Without vision the people perish"


Without a high ideal an individual never climbs. Keep your eyes on
the mountain top, and, though you may stumble and fall many times
in the ascent, though great bowlders, dense forests, and roaring
torrents may often bar the way, look right on, never losing sight
of the light which shines away up in the clear atmosphere of the
mountain peak, and you will ultimately reach your goal.

When the late Horace Maynard, LL.D., entered Amherst College, he
exposed himself to the ridicule and jibing questions of his
fellow-students by placing over the door of his room a large
square of white cardboard on which was inscribed in bold outlines
the single letter "V." Disregarding comment and question, the
young man applied himself to his work, ever keeping in mind the
height to which he wished to climb, the first step toward which
was signified by the mysterious "V."

Four years later, after receiving the compliments of professors
and students on the way he had acquitted himself as valedictorian
of his class, young Maynard called the attention of his fellow-
graduates to the letter over his door. Then a light broke in upon
them, and they cried out, "Is it possible that you had the
valedictory in mind when you put that 'V' over your door?"

"Assuredly I had," was the emphatic reply.

On he climbed, from height to height, becoming successively
professor of mathematics in the University of Tennessee, lawyer,
member of Congress, attorney-general of Tennessee, United States
minister to Constantinople, and, finally, postmaster-general.

Honorable ambition is the leaven that raises the whole mass of
mankind. Ideals, visions, are the stepping-stones by which we rise
to higher things.

"Still, through our paltry stir and strife,
        Glows down the wished ideal,
     And longing molds in clay what life
        Carves in the marble real;

    "To let the new life in, we know,
        Desire must ope the portal,--
     Perhaps the longing to be so
        Helps make the soul immortal."





THE EVOLUTION OF A VIOLINIST


He was a famous artist whom kings and queens and emperors
delighted to honor. The emperor of all the Russias had sent him an
affectionate letter, written by his own hand; the empress, a
magnificent emerald ring set with diamonds; the king of his own
beloved Norway, who had listened reverently, standing with
uncovered head, while he, the king of violinists, played before
him, had bestowed upon him the Order of Vasa; the king of
Copenhagen presented him with a gold snuffbox, encrusted with
diamonds; while, at a public dinner given him by the students of
Christiana, he was crowned with a laurel wreath. Not all the
thousands who thronged to hear him in London could gain entrance
to the concert hall, and in Liverpool he received four thousand
dollars for one evening's performance.

Yet the homage of the great ones of the earth, the princely gifts
bestowed upon him, the admiration of the thousands who hung
entranced on every note breathed by his magic violin, gave less
delight than the boy of fourteen experienced when he received from
an old man, whose heart his playing had gladdened, the present of
four pairs of doves, with a card suspended by a blue ribbon round
the neck of one, bearing his own name, "Ole Bull."

The soul of little Ole Bull had always been attuned to melody,
from the time when, a toddling boy of four, he had kissed with
passionate delight the little yellow violin given him by his
uncle. How happy he was, as he wandered alone through the meadows,
listening with the inner ear of heaven-born genius to the great
song of nature. The bluebells, the buttercups, and the blades of
grass sang to him in low, sweet tones, unheard by duller ears. How
he thrilled with delight when he touched the strings of the little
red violin, purchased for him when he was eight years old. His
father destined him for the church, and, feeling that music should
form part of the education of a clergyman, he consented to the
mother's proposition that the boy should take lessons on the
violin.

Ole could not sleep for joy, that first night of ownership; and,
when the house was wrapped in slumber, he got up and stole on
tiptoe to the room where his treasure lay. The bow seemed to
beckon to him, the pretty pearl screws to smile at him out of
their red setting. "I pinched the strings just a little," he said.
"It smiled at me ever more and more. I took up the bow and looked
at it. It said to me it would be pleasant to try it across the
strings. So I did try it just a very, very little, and it did sing
to me so sweetly. At first I did play very soft. But presently I
did begin a capriccio, which I like very much, and it did go ever
louder and louder; and I forgot that it was midnight and that
everybody was asleep. Presently I hear something crack; and the
next minute I feel my father's whip across my shoulders. My little
red violin dropped on the floor, and was broken. I weep much for
it, but it did no good. They did have a doctor to it next day, but
it never recovered its health."

He was given another violin, however, and, when only ten, he would
wander into the fields and woods, and spend hours playing his own
improvisations, echoing the song of the birds, the murmur of the
brook, the thunder of the waterfall, the soughing of the wind
among the trees, the roar of the storm.

But childhood's days are short. The years fly by. The little Ole
is eighteen, a student in the University of Christiana, preparing
for the ministry. His brother students beg him to play for a
charitable association. He remembers his father's request that he
yield not to his passion for music, but being urged for "sweet
charity's sake," he consents.

The youth's struggle between the soul's imperative demand and the
equally imperative parental dictate was pathetic. Meanwhile the
position of musical director of the Philharmonic and Dramatic
Societies becoming vacant, Ole was appointed to the office; and,
seeing that it was useless to contend longer against the genius of
his son, the disappointed father allowed him to accept the
directorship.

When fairly launched on a musical career, his trials and
disappointments began. Wishing to assure himself whether he had
genius or not, he traveled five hundred miles to see and hear the
celebrated Louis Spohr, who received the tremulous youth coldly,
and gave him no encouragement. No matter, he would go to the city
of art. In Paris he heard Berlioz and other great musicians.
Entranced he listened, in his high seat at the top of the house,
to the exquisite notes of Malibran.

His soul feasted on music, but his money was fast dwindling away,
and the body could not be sustained by sweet sounds. But the poor
unknown violinist, who was only another atom in the surging life
of the great city, could earn nothing. He was on the verge of
starvation, but he would not go back to Christiana. He must still
struggle and study. He became ill of brain fever, and was tenderly
nursed back to life by the granddaughter of his kind landlady,
pretty little Felicie Villeminot, who afterward became his wife.
He had drained the cup of poverty and disappointment to the dregs,
but the tide was about to turn.

He was invited to play at a concert presided over by the Duke of
Montebello, and this led to other profitable engagements. But the
great opportunity of his life came to him in Bologna. The people
had thronged to the opera house to hear Malibran. She had
disappointed them, and they were in no mood to be lenient to the
unknown violinist who had the temerity to try to fill her place.

He came on the stage. He bowed. He grew pale under the cold gaze
of the thousands of unsympathetic eyes turned upon him. But the
touch of his beloved violin gave him confidence. Lovingly,
tenderly, he drew the bow across the strings. The coldly critical
eyes no longer gazed at him. The unsympathetic audience melted
away. He and his violin were one and alone. In the hands of the
great magician the instrument was more than human. It talked; it
laughed; it wept; it controlled the moods of men as the wind
controls the sea.

The audience scarcely breathed. Criticism was disarmed. Malibran
was forgotten. The people were under the spell of the enchanter.
Orpheus had come again. But suddenly the music ceased. The spell
was broken. With a shock the audience returned to earth, and Ole
Bull, restored to consciousness of his whereabouts by the storm of
applause which shook the house, found himself famous forever.

His triumph was complete, but his work was not over, for the price
of fame is ceaseless endeavor. But the turning point had been
passed. He had seized the great opportunity for which his life had
been a preparation, and it had placed him on the roll of the
immortals.





THE LESSON OF THE TEAKETTLE


The teakettle was singing merrily over the fire; the good aunt was
bustling round, on housewifely cares intent, and her little nephew
sat dreamily gazing into the glowing blaze on the kitchen hearth.

Presently the teakettle ceased singing, and a column of steam came
rushing from its pipe. The boy started to his feet, raised the lid
from the kettle, and peered in at the bubbling, boiling water,
with a look of intense interest. Then he rushed off for a teacup,
and, holding it over the steam, eagerly watched the latter as it
condensed and formed into tiny drops of water on the inside of the
cup.

Returning from an upper room, whither her duties had called her,
the thrifty aunt was shocked to find her nephew engaged in so
profitless an occupation, and soundly scolded him for what she
called his trifling. The good lady little dreamed that James Watt
was even then unconsciously studying the germ of the science by
which he "transformed the steam engine from a mere toy into the
most wonderful instrument which human industry has ever had at its
command."

This studious little Scottish lad, who, because too frail to go to
school, had been taught at home, was very different from other
boys. When only six or seven years old, he would lie for hours on
the hearth, in the little cottage at Greenock, near Glasgow, where
he was born in 1736, drawing geometrical figures with pieces of
colored chalk. He loved, too, to gaze at the stars, and longed to
solve their mysteries. But his favorite pastime was to burrow
among the ropes and sails and tackles in his father's store,
trying to find out how they were made and what purposes they
served.

In spite of his limited advantages and frail health, at fifteen he
was the wonder of the public school, which he had attended for two
years. His favorite studies were mathematics and natural
philosophy. He had also made good progress in chemistry,
physiology, mineralogy, and botany, and, at the same time, had
learned carpentry and acquired some skill as a worker in metals.

So studious and ambitious a youth scarcely needed the spur of
poverty to induce him to make the most of his talents. The spur
was there, however, and, at the age of eighteen, though delicate
in health, he was obliged to go out and battle with the world.

Having first spent some time in Glasgow, learning how to make
mathematical instruments, he determined to go to London, there to
perfect himself in his trade.

Working early and late, and suffering frequently from cold and
hunger, he broke down under the unequal strain, and was obliged to
return to his parents for a time until health was regained.

Always struggling against great odds, he returned to Glasgow when
his trade was mastered, and began to make mathematical
instruments, for which, however, he found little sale. Then, to
help eke out a living, he began to make and mend other
instruments,--fiddles, guitars, and flutes,--and finally built an
organ,--a very superior one, too,--with several additions of his
own invention.

A commonplace incident enough it seemed, in the routine of his
daily occupation, when, one morning, a model of Newcomen's engine
was brought to him for repair, yet it marked the turning point in
his career, which ultimately led from poverty and struggle to fame
and affluence.

Watt's practiced eye at once perceived the defects in the Newcomen
engine, which, although the best then in existence could not do
much better or quicker work than horses. Filled with enthusiasm
over the plans which he had conceived for the construction of a
really powerful engine, he immediately set to work, and spent two
months in an old cellar, working on a model. "My whole thoughts
are bent on this machine," he wrote to a friend. "I can think of
nothing else."

So absorbed had he become in his new work that the old business of
making and mending instruments had declined. This was all the more
unfortunate as he was no longer struggling for himself alone. He
had fallen in love with, and married, his cousin, Margaret Miller,
who brought him the greatest happiness of his life. The neglect of
the only practical means of support he had reduced Watt and his
family to the direst poverty. More than once his health failed,
and often the brave spirit was almost broken, as when he exclaimed
in heaviness of heart, "Of all the things in the world, there is
nothing so foolish as inventing."

Five years had passed since the model of the Newcomen engine had
been sent to him for repair before he succeeded in securing a
patent on his own invention. Yet five more long years of bitter
drudgery, clutched in the grip of poverty, debt, and sickness, did
the brave inventor, sustained by the love and help of his noble
wife, toil through. On his thirty-fifth birthday he said, "To-day
I enter the thirty-fifth year of my life, and I think I have
hardly yet done thirty-five pence worth of good in the world; but
I cannot help it."

Poor Watt! He had traveled with bleeding feet along the same
thorny path trod by the great inventors and benefactors of all
ages. But, in spite of all obstacles, he persevered; and, after
ten years of inconceivable labor and hardship, during which his
beautiful wife died, he had a glorious triumph. His perfected
steam engine was the wonder of the age. Sir James Mackintosh
placed him "at the head of all inventors in all ages and nations."
"I look upon him," said the poet Wordsworth, "considering both the
magnitude and the universality of his genius, as, perhaps, the
most extraordinary man that this country ever produced."

Wealthy beyond his desires,--for he cared not for wealth,--crowned
with the laurel wreath of fame, honored by the civilized world as
one of its greatest benefactors, the struggle over, the triumph
achieved, on August 19, 1819, he lay down to rest.





HOW THE ART OF PRINTING WAS DISCOVERED


"Look, Grandfather; see what the letters have done!" exclaimed a
delighted boy, as he picked up the piece of parchment in which
Grandfather Coster had carried the bark letters cut from the trees
in the grove, for the instruction and amusement of his little
grandsons.

"See what the letters have done!" echoed the old man. "Bless me,
what does the child mean?" and his eyes twinkled with pleasure, as
he noted the astonishment and pleasure visible on the little face.
"Let me see what it is that pleases thee so, Laurence," and he
eagerly took the parchment from the boy's hand.

"Bless my soul!" cried the old man, after gazing spellbound upon
it for some seconds. The track of the mysterious footprint in the
sand excited no more surprise in the mind of Robinson Crusoe than
Grandfather Coster felt at the sight which met his eyes. There,
distinctly impressed upon the parchment, was a clear imprint of
the bark letters; though, of course, they were reversed or turned
about.

But you twentieth-century young folks who have your fill of story
books, picture books, and reading matter of all kinds, are
wondering, perhaps, what all this talk about bark letters and
parchment and imprint of letters means.

To understand it, you must carry your imagination away back more
than five centuries--quite a long journey of the mind, even for
"grown-ups"--to a time when there were no printed books, and when
very, very few of the rich and noble, and scarcely any of the so-
called common people, could read. In those far-off days there were
no public libraries, and no books except rare and expensive
volumes, written by hand, mainly by monks in their quiet
monasteries, on parchment or vellum.

In the quaint, drowsy, picturesque town of Haarlem, in Holland,
with its narrow, irregular, grass-grown streets and many-gabled
houses, the projecting upper stories of which almost meet, one
particular house, which seems even older than any of the others,
is pointed out to visitors as one of the most interesting sights
of the ancient place. It was in this house that Laurence Coster,
the father of the art of printing, the man--at least so runs the
legend--who made it possible for the poorest and humblest to enjoy
the inestimable luxury of books and reading, lived and loved and
dreamed more than five hundred years ago.

Coster was warden of the little church which stood near his home,
and his days flowed peacefully on, in a quiet, uneventful way,
occupied with the duties of his office, and reading and study, for
he was one of those who had mastered the art of reading. A
diligent student, he had conned over and over, until he knew them
by heart, the few manuscript volumes owned by the little church of
which he was warden.

A lover of solitude, as well as student and dreamer, the church
warden's favorite resort, when his duties left him at leisure, was
a dense grove not far from the town. Thither he went when he
wished to be free from all distraction, to think and dream over
many things which would appear nonsensical to his sober,
practical-minded neighbors. There he indulged in day dreams and
poetic fancies; and once, when in a sentimental mood, he carved
the initials of the lady of his love on one of the trees.

In time a fair young wife and children came, bringing new
brightness and joy to the serious-minded warden. With ever
increasing interests, he passed on from youth to middle life, and
from middle life to old age. Then his son married, and again the
patter of little feet filled the old home and made music in the
ears of Grandfather Coster, whom the baby grandchildren almost
worshiped.

To amuse the children, and to impart to them whatever knowledge he
himself possessed, became the delight of his old age. Then the
habit acquired in youth of carving letters in the bark of the
trees served a very useful purpose in furthering his object. He
still loved to take solitary walks, and many a quiet summer
afternoon the familiar figure of the venerable churchwarden, in
his seedy black cloak and sugar-loaf hat, might be seen wending
its way along the banks of the River Spaaren to his favorite
resort in the grove.

One day, while reclining on a mossy couch beneath a spreading
beech tree, amusing himself by tearing strips of bark from the
tree that shaded him, and carving letters with his knife, a happy
thought entered his mind. "Why can I not," he mused within
himself, "cut those letters out, carry them home, and, while using
them as playthings, teach the little ones how to read?"

The plan worked admirably. Long practice had made the old man
quite expert in fashioning the letters, and many hours of quiet
happiness were spent in the grove in this pleasing occupation. One
afternoon he succeeded in cutting some unusually fine specimens,
and, chuckling to himself over the delight they would give the
children, he wrapped them carefully, placing them side by side in
an old piece of parchment which he happened to have in his pocket.
The bark from which they had been cut being fresh and full of sap,
and the letters being firmly pressed upon the parchment, the
result was the series of "pictures" which delighted the child and
gave to the world the first suggestion of a printing press.

And then a mighty thought flashed across the brain of the poor,
humble, unknown churchwarden, a thought the realization of which
was destined not only to make him famous for all time, but to
revolutionize the whole world. The first dim suggestion came to
him in this form, "By having a series of letters and impressing
them over and over again on parchment, cannot books be printed
instead of written, and so multiplied and cheapened as to be
brought within the reach of all?"

The remainder of his life was given up to developing this great
idea. He cut more letters from bark, and, covering the smooth
surface with ink, pressed them upon parchment, thus getting a
better impression, though still blurred and imperfect. He then cut
letters from wood instead of bark, and managed to invent himself a
better and thicker ink, which did not blur the page. Next, he cut
letters from lead, and then from pewter. Every hour was absorbed
in the work of making possible the art of printing. His simple-
minded neighbors thought he had lost his mind, and some of the
more superstitious spread the report that he was a sorcerer. But,
like all other great discoverers, he heeded not annoyances or
discouragements. Shutting himself away from the prying curiosity
of the ignorant and superstitious, he plodded on, making steady,
if slow, advance toward the realization of his dream.

"One day, while old Coster was thus busily at work," says George
Makepeace Towle, "a sturdy German youth, with a knapsack slung
across his back, trudged into Haarlem. By some chance this youth
happened to hear how the churchwarden was at work upon a wild
scheme to print books instead of writing them. With beating heart,
the young man repaired to Coster's house and made all haste to
knock at the churchwarden's humble door."

The "sturdy German youth" who knocked at Laurence Coster's door
was Johann Gutenberg, the inventor of modern printing. Coster
invited him to enter. Gutenberg accepted the invitation, and then
stated the object of his visit. He desired to learn more about the
work on which Coster was engaged. Delighted to have a visitor who
was honestly interested in his work, the old man eagerly explained
its details to the youth, and showed him some examples of his
printing.

Gutenberg was much impressed by what he saw, but still more by the
possibilities which he dimly foresaw in Coster's discovery. "But
we can do much better than this," he said with the enthusiasm of
youth. "Your printing is even slower than the writing of the
monks. From this day forth I will work upon this problem, and not
rest till I have solved it."

Johann Gutenberg kept his word. He never rested until he had given
the art of printing to the world. But to Laurence Coster, in the
first place, if legend speaks truth, we owe one of the greatest
inventions that has ever blessed mankind.





SEA FEVER AND WHAT IT LED TO


"Jim, you've too good a head on you to be a wood chopper or a
canal driver," said the captain of the canal boat for whom young
Garfield had engaged to drive horses along the towpath.

"Jim" had always loved books from the time when, seated on his
father's knee, he had with his baby lips pronounced after him the
name "Plutarch." Mr. Garfield had been reading "Plutarch's Lives,"
and was much astonished when, without hesitation or stammering,
his little son distinctly pronounced the name of the Greek
biographer. Turning to his wife, with a glow of love and pride,
the fond father said, "Eliza, this boy will be a scholar some
day."

Perhaps the near approach of death had clarified the father's
vision, but when, soon after, the sorrowing wife was left a widow,
with an indebted farm and four little children to care for, she
saw little chance for the fulfillment of the prophecy.

Even in his babyhood the boy whose future greatness the father
dimly felt had learned the lesson of self-reliance. The familiar
words which so often fell from his lips--"I can do that"--enabled
him to conquer difficulties before which stouter hearts than that
of a little child might well have quailed.

The teaching of his good mother, that "God will bless all our
efforts to do the best we can," became a part of the fiber of his
being. "What will He do," asked the boy one day, "when we don't do
the best we can?" "He will withhold His blessing; and that is the
greatest calamity that could possibly happen to us," was the
reply, which made a deep impression on the mind of the questioner.

In spite of almost constant toil, and very meager schooling,--only
a few weeks each year,--James Garfield excelled all his companions
in the log schoolhouse. Besides solving at home in the long winter
evenings, by the light of the pine fire, all the knotty problems
in Adams' Arithmetic--the terror of many a schoolboy--he found
time to revel in the pages of "Robinson Crusoe" and "Josephus."
The latter was his special favorite

Before he was fifteen, Garfield had successfully followed the
occupations of farmer, wood chopper, and carpenter. No matter what
his occupation was he always managed to find some time for
reading.

He had recently read some of Marryat's novels, "Sindbad the
Sailor," "The Pirate's Own Book," and others of a similar nature,
which had smitten him with a virulent attack of sea fever. This is
a mental disease which many robust, adventurous boys are apt to
contract in their teens. Garfield felt that he must "sail the
ocean blue." The glamour of the sea was upon him. Everything must
give way before it. His mother, however, could not be induced to
assent to his plans, and, after long pleading, would only
compromise by agreeing that he might, if he could, secure a berth
on one of the vessels navigating Lake Erie.

He was rudely repulsed by the owner of the first vessel to whom he
applied, a brutal, drunken creature, who answered his request for
employment with an oath and a rough "Get off this schooner in
double quick, or I'll throw you into the dock." Garfield turned
away in disgust, his ardor for the sea somewhat dampened by the
man's appearance and behavior. In this mood he met his cousin,
formerly a schoolmaster, then captain of a canal boat, with whom
he at once engaged to drive his horses.

After a few months on the towpath, young Garfield contracted
another kind of fever quite unlike that from which he had been
suffering previously, and went home to be nursed out of it by his
ever faithful mother.

During his convalescence he thought a great deal over his cousin's
words,--"Jim, you've got too good a head on you to be a wood
chopper or a canal driver." "He who wills to do anything will do
it," he had learned from his mother's lips when a mere baby, and
then and there he said in his heart, "I will be a scholar; I will
go to college." And so, out of his sea fever and towpath
experience was born the resolution that made the turning point in
his career.

Action followed hot upon resolve. He lost no time in applying
himself to the work of securing an education. Alternately chopping
wood and carpentering, farming and teaching school, ringing bells
and sweeping floors, he worked his way through seminary and
college. His strong will and resolute purpose to make the most of
himself not only enabled him to obtain an education, but raised
him from the towpath to the presidential chair.





GLADSTONE FOUND TIME TO BE KIND

    A kindly act is a kernel sown,
       That will grow to a goodly tree,
    Shedding its fruit when time has flown
       Down the gulf of Eternity.
                         JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY.


In the restless desire for acquisition,--acquisition of money, of
power, or of fame,--there is danger of selfishness, self-
absorption, closing the doors of our hearts against the demands of
brotherly love, courtesy, and kindness.

"I cannot afford to help," say the poor in pocket; "all I have is
too little for my own needs." "I should like to help others," says
the ambitious student, whose every spare moment is crowded with
some extra task, "but I have no money, and cannot afford to take
the time from my studies to give sympathy or kind words to the
suffering and the poor." Says the busy man of affairs: "I am
willing to give money, but my time is too valuable to be spent in
talking to sick people or shiftless, lazy ones. That sort of work
is not in my line. I leave it to women and the charitable
organizations."

The business man forgets, as do many of us, the truth expressed by
Ruskin, that "a little thought and a little kindness are often
worth more than a great deal of money." A few kind words, a little
sympathy and encouragement have often brought sunshine and hope
into the lives of men and women who were on the verge of despair.

The great demand is on people's hearts rather than on their
purses. In the matter of kindness we can all afford to be generous
whether we have money or not. The schoolboy may give it as freely
as the millionaire. No one is so driven by work that he has not
time, now and then, to say a kind word or do a kind deed that will
help to brighten life for another. If the prime minister of
England, William E. Gladstone, could find time to carry a bunch of
flowers to a little sick crossing-sweeper, shall we not be ashamed
to make for ourselves the excuse, "I haven't time to be kind"?





A TRIBUNE OF THE PEOPLE


Clad in a homespun tow shirt, shrunken, butternut-colored,
linsey-woolsey pantaloons, battered straw hat, and much-mended
jacket and shoes, with ten dollars in his pocket, and all his
other worldly goods packed in the bundle he carried on his back,
Horace Greeley, the future founder of the New York Tribune,
started to seek his fortune in New York.

A newspaper had always been an object of interest and delight to
the little delicate, tow-haired boy, and at the mature age of six
he had made up his mind to be a printer. His love of reading was
unusual in one so young. Before he was six he had read the Bible
and "Pilgrim's Progress" through.

Like the children of all poor farmers, Horace was put to work as
soon as he was able to do anything. But he made the most of the
opportunities given him to attend school, and his love of reading;
stimulated him to unusual efforts to procure books. By selling
nuts and bundles of kindling wood at the village store, before he
was ten he had earned enough money to buy a copy of Shakespeare
and of Mrs. Hemans's poems. He borrowed every book that could be
found within a radius of seven miles of his home, and by many
readings he had made himself familiar with the score of old
volumes in his log-cabin home.

Mrs. Sarah K. Bolton draws a pleasing picture of the farmer boy
reading at night after the day's work on the farm was done. "He
gathered a stock of pine knots," she says, "and, lighting one each
night, lay down by the hearth and read, oblivious to all around
him. The neighbors came and made their friendly visits, and ate
apples and drank cider, as was the fashion, but the lad never
noticed their coming or their going. When really forced to leave
his precious books for bed, he would repeat the information he had
learned, or the lessons for the next day to his brother, who
usually, most ungraciously, fell asleep before the conversation
was half completed."

"Ah!" said Zaccheus Greeley, Horace's father, when the boy one
day, in a fit of abstraction, tried to yoke the "off" ox on the
"near" side: "Ah! that boy will never know enough to get on in the
world. He'll never know more than enough to come in when it
rains!"

Yet this boy knew so much that when at fourteen he secured a place
as printer in a newspaper office at East Poultney, Vermont, he was
looked up to by his fellow-printers as equal in learning to the
editor himself.

At first they tried to make merry at his expense, poking fun at
his odd-looking garments, his uncouth appearance, and his pale,
delicate face and almost white hair, which subsequently won for
him the nickname of "Ghost." But when they saw that Horace was too
good humored and too much in earnest with his work to be disturbed
by their teasing, they gave it up. In a short time he became a
general favorite, not only in the office, but in the town of
Poultney, whose debating and literary societies soon recognized
him as leader. Even the minister, the lawyer, and the school-
teachers looked up to the poor, retiring young printer, who was a
veritable encyclopedia of knowledge, ready at all times to speak
or to write an essay on any subject.

But the Poultney newspaper was obliged to suspend soon after
Horace had learned his trade, and, penniless,--for every cent of
his earnings beyond what furnished the bare necessaries of life
had been sent home to his parents in the wilderness,--he faced the
world once more.

After working in different small towns wherever he could get a
"job," reading, studying, enlarging his knowledge all the time
when not in the office, he made up his mind to go to New York, "to
be somebody," as he put it.

When he stepped off the towboat at Whitehall, near the Battery,
that sunny morning in August, 1831, with only the experience of a
score of years in life, a stout heart, quick brain, nimble
fingers, and an abiding faith in God as his capital, his prospects
certainly were not very alluring.

"An overgrown, awkward, white-headed, forlorn-looking boy; a pack
suspended on a staff over his right shoulder; his dress unrivaled
in sylvan simplicity since the primitive fig leaves of Eden; the
expression of his face presenting a strange union of wonder and
apathy: his whole appearance gave you the impression of a runaway
apprentice in desperate search of employment. Ignorant alike of
the world and its ways, he seemed to the denizens of the city
almost like a wanderer from another planet."

Such was the impression Horace Greeley made on a New Yorker on his
first arrival in that city which was to be the scene of his future
work and triumphs.

He tramped the streets all that day, Friday, and the next, looking
for work, everywhere getting the same discouraging reply, "No, we
don't want any one."

At last, when weary and disheartened, his ten dollars almost gone,
he had decided to shake the dust of New York from his feet, the
foreman of a printing office engaged him to do some work that most
of the men in the office had refused to touch. The setting up of a
Polyglot Testament, with involved marginal references, was
something new for the supposed "green" hand from the country. But
when the day was done, the young printer was no longer looked upon
as "green" by his fellow-workers, for he had done more and better
work than the oldest and most experienced hands who had tried the
Testament.

But, oh, what hard work it was, beginning at six o'clock in the
morning, and working long after the going down of the sun, by the
light of a candle stuck in a bottle, to earn six dollars a week,
most of which was sent to his dear ones at home.

After nearly ten years more of struggle and privation, Greeley
entered upon the great work of his life--the founding and editing
of the New York Tribune. He had very little money to start with,
and even that little was borrowed. But he had courage, truth,
honesty, a noble purpose, and rare ability and industry to
supplement his small financial capital. He needed them all in the
work he had undertaken, for he was handicapped not only by lack of
means, but also by the opposition of some of the New York papers.

In spite of the adverse conditions he succeeded in establishing
one of the greatest and most popular newspapers in the country.
The Tribune became the champion of the oppressed, the guardian of
justice, the defender of truth, a power for good in the land.
Through his paper Greeley became a tribune of the people. No
thought of making money hampered him in his work. Unselfishly he
wrought as editor, writer, and lecturer for the good of his
country and the uplifting of mankind. "He who by voice or pen," he
said, "strikes his best blow at the impostures or vices whereby
our race is debased and paralyzed, may close his eyes in death,
consoled and cheered by the reflection that he has done what he
could for the emancipation and elevation of his kind."

Well, then, might he rejoice in his life work, for his voice and
pen had to the last been active in thus serving the race.

He died on November 29, 1872, at the age of sixty-one. So great a
man had Horace Greeley, the poor New Hampshire farmer boy, become
that the whole nation mourned for his death. The people felt that
in him they had lost one of their best friends. A workman who
attended his funeral expressed the feeling of his fellow-workmen
all over the land when he said, "It is little enough to lose a day
for Horace Greeley who spent many a day working for us." "I've
come a hundred miles to be at the funeral of Horace Greeley," said
a farmer.

The great tribune had deserved well of the people and of his
country.





THE MIGHT OF PATIENCE


Perhaps some would feel inclined to ridicule rather than applaud
the patience of a poor Chinese woman who tried to make a needle
from a rod of iron by rubbing it against a stone.

It is doubtful whether she succeeded or not, but, so the story
runs, the sight of the worker plying her seemingly hopeless task,
put new courage and determination into the heart of a young
Chinese student, who, in deep despondency, stood watching her.

Because of repeated failures in his studies, ambition and hope had
left him. Bitterly disappointed with himself, and despairing of
ever accomplishing anything, the young man had thrown his books
aside in disgust. Put to shame, however, by the lesson taught by
the old woman, he gathered his scattered forces together, went to
work with renewed ardor, and, wedding Patience and Energy, became,
in time, one of the greatest scholars in China.

When you know you are on the right track, do not let any failures
dim your vision or discourage you, for you cannot tell how close
you may be to victory. Have patience and stick, stick, stick. It
is eternally true that he

              "Who steers right on
    Will gain, at length, however far, the port."





THE INSPIRATION OF GAMBETTA


"Try to come home a somebody!" Long after Leon Gambetta had left
the old French town of Cahors, where he was born October 30, 1838,
long after the gay and brilliant streets of Paris had become
familiar to him, did the parting words of his idolized mother ring
in his ears, "Try to come home a somebody!" Pinched for food and
clothes, as he often was, while he studied early and late in his
bare garret near the Sorbonne, the memory of that dear mother
cheered and strengthened him.

He could still feel her tears and kisses on his cheek, and the
tender clasp of her hand as she pressed into his the slender purse
of money which she had saved to release him from the drudgery of
an occupation he loathed, and to enable him to become a great
lawyer in Paris. How well he remembered her delight in listening
to him declaim the speeches of Thiers and Guizot from the pages of
the National, which she had taught him to read when but a mere
baby, and from which he imbibed his first lessons in
republicanism,--lessons that he never afterward forgot.

Such deep root had they taken that he could not be induced to
change his views by the fathers of the preparatory school at
Monfaucon, whither he had been sent to be trained for the
priesthood. Finally despairing of bringing the young radical to
their way of thinking, the Monfaucon fathers sent him home to his
parents. "You will never make a priest of him," they wrote; "he
has a character that cannot be disciplined."

His father, an honest but narrow-minded Italian, whose ideas did
not soar beyond his little bazaar and grocery store, was
displeased with the boy, who was then only ten years old. He could
not understand how one so young dared to think his own thoughts
and hold his own opinions. The neighbors held up their hands in
dismay, and prophesied, "He will end his days in the Bastile." His
mother wept and blamed herself and the National as the cause of
all the trouble.

How little the fond mother, the disappointed father, or the
gloomily foreboding neighbors dreamt to what heights those early
lessons they now so bitterly deplored were to lead!

When at sixteen Leon Gambetta returned from the Lyceum to which he
had been sent on his return from the Monfaucon seminary, his wide
reading and deep study had but intensified and broadened the
radicalism of his childhood. He longed to go to Paris to study
law, but his father insisted that he must now confine his thoughts
to selling groceries and yards of ribbon and lace, as he expected
his son to succeed him in the business.

Poor, foolish Joseph Gambetta! he would confine the young eagle in
a barnyard. But the eagle pined and drooped in his cage, and then
the loving mother--ah, those loving mothers, will their boys ever
realize how much they owe them!--threw open the doors and gave him
freedom, an opportunity to win fame and fortune in the great city
of Paris.

And now what mattered it that his clothes were poor, that his food
was scant, and that it was often bitterly cold in his little
garret. If not for his own sake, he MUST for hers "come home a
somebody."

The doors which led to a wider future were already opening. The
professors at the Sorbonne appreciated his great intellect and
originality. "You have a true vocation," said one. "Follow it. But
go to the bar, where your voice, which is one in a thousand, will
carry you on, study and intelligence aiding. The lecture room is a
narrow theater. If you like, I will write to your father to tell
him what my opinion of you is." And he wrote, "The best investment
you ever made would be to spend what money you can divert from
your business in helping your son to become an advocate."

To such good purpose did the young student use his time that
within two years he won his diploma. Still too young to be
admitted to the bar, he spent a year studying life in Paris,
listening to the debates in the Corps Legislatif, reading and
debating in the radical club which he had organized, making
himself ready at every point for the great opportunity which
gained him a national reputation and made him the idol of the
masses.

In 1868 his masterly defense of Delescluze, the radical editor,
against the prosecution of the Imperial government, brought the
brilliant but hitherto unknown young lawyer prominently before the
public. He lost his case, but won fame. Gambetta had waited
eighteen months for his first brief, and five times eighteen
months for his first great case. This case proved to be the
initial step that led him from victory to victory, until, after
the fall of Napoleon at Sedan, he became practically Dictator of
France. He was, more than any one man, the maker of the French
Republic, whose rights and liberties he ever defended, even at the
risk of his life. He died December 31, 1882.

Well had he fulfilled the hopes and ambitions of his loving
mother, well had he answered the pathetic appeal, "Try to come
home a somebody."





ANDREW JACKSON THE BOY WHO "NEVER WOULD GIVE UP"


"Sir, I am a prisoner of war, and demand to be treated as such,"
was the spirited reply of Andrew Jackson to a British officer who
had commanded him to clean his boots.

This was characteristic of the future hero of New Orleans, and
president of the United States, whose independent spirit rebelled
at the insolent command of his captor.

The officer drew his sword to enforce obedience, but, nothing
daunted, the youth, although then only fourteen, persisted in his
refusal. He tried to parry the sword thrusts aimed at him, but did
not escape without wounds on head and arm, the marks of which he
carried to his grave.

Stubborn, self-willed, and always dominated by the desire to be a
leader, Andrew Jackson was by no means a model boy. But his
honesty, love of truth, indomitable will and courage, in spite of
his many faults, led him to greatness.

He was born with fighting blood in his veins, and, like other
eminent men who have risen to the White House, poor. His father,
an Irish immigrant, died before his youngest son was born,--in
1767,--and life held for the boy more hard knocks than soft
places. His mother, who was ambitious to make him a clergyman,
tried to secure him some early advantages of schooling. Andrew,
however, was not of a studious disposition, nor at all inclined to
the ministry, and made little effort to profit by even the limited
opportunities he had.

But despite all the disadvantages of environment and mental traits
by which he was handicapped, he was bound by the force of certain
other traits to be a winner in the battle of life. The quality to
which his success is chiefly owing is revealed by the words of a
school-fellow, who, in spite of Jackson's slender physique and
lack of physical strength at that time, felt the force of his iron
will. Speaking of their wrestling matches at school, this boy
said, "I could throw him [Jackson] three times out of four, but he
never would stay throwed. He was dead game and never would give
up."

A boy who "never would stay throwed," and "never would give up"
would succeed though the whole world tried to bar his progress.

When, at the age of fifteen, he found himself alone in the world,
homeless and penniless, he adapted himself to anything he could
find to do.

Worker in a saddler's shop, school-teacher, lawyer, merchant,
judge of the Supreme Court, United States senator, soldier,
leader, step by step the son of the poor Irish immigrant rose to
the highest office to which his countrymen could elect him--the
presidency of the United States.

Rash, headstrong, and narrow-minded, Andrew Jackson fell into many
errors during his life, but, notwithstanding his shortcomings, he
persistently tried to live up to his boyhood's motto, "Ask nothing
but what is right--submit to nothing wrong."





SIR HUMPHRY DAVY'S GREATEST DISCOVERY, MICHAEL FARADAY


He was only a little, barefooted errand boy, the son of a poor
blacksmith. His school life ended in his thirteenth year. The
extent of his education then was limited to a knowledge of the
three "R's." As he trudged on his daily rounds, through the busy
streets of London, delivering newspapers and books to the
customers of his employer, there was little difference, outwardly,
between him and scores of other boys who jostled one another in
the narrow, crowded thoroughfares. But under the shabby jacket of
Michael Faraday beat a heart braver and tenderer than the average;
and, under the well-worn cap, a brain was throbbing that was
destined to illuminate the world of science with a light that
would never grow dim.

Less than any one else, perhaps, did the boy dream of future
greatness. For a year he served his employer faithfully in his
capacity of errand boy, and, in 1805, at the age of fourteen, was
apprenticed to a bookseller for seven years, as was the custom in
England, to learn the combined trades of bookbinding and book-
selling.

The young journeyman had to exercise all his self-control to
confine his attention to the outside of the books which passed
through his hands. In his spare moments, however, he made himself
familiar with the inside of many of them, eagerly devouring such
works on science, electricity, chemistry, and natural philosophy,
as came within his reach. He was especially delighted with an
article on electricity, which he found in a volume of the
"Encyclopedia Britannica," which had been given him to bind. He
immediately began work on an electrical machine, from the very
crudest materials, and, much to his delight, succeeded. It was a
red-letter day in his young life when a kind-hearted customer,
who had noticed his interest in scientific works, offered to take
him to the Royal Institution, to attend a course of lectures to be
given by the great Sir Humphry Davy. From this time on, his
thoughts were constantly turned toward science. "Oh, if I could
only help in some scientific work, no matter how humble!" was the
daily cry of his soul. But not yet was his prayer to be granted.
His mettle must be tried in the school of patience and drudgery.
He must fulfill his contract with his master. For seven years he
was faithful to his work, while his heart was elsewhere. And all
that time, in the eagerness of his thirst for knowledge, he was
imbibing facts which helped him to plan electrical achievements,
the possibilities of which have not, to this day, been exhausted,
--or even half realized. Like Franklin, he seemed to forecast the
scientific future for ages.

At length he was free to follow his bent, and his mind turned at
once to Sir Humphry Davy. With a beating heart, divided between
hope and fear, he wrote to the great man, telling what he wished,
and asking his aid. The scientist, remembering his own day of
small things, wrote the youth, politely, that he was going out of
town, but would see if he could, sometime, aid him. He also said
that "science is a harsh mistress, and, in a pecuniary point of
view, but poorly rewards those who devote themselves exclusively
to her service."

This was not very encouraging, but the young votary of science was
nothing daunted, and toiled at his uncongenial trade, with the
added discomfort of an ill-tempered employer, giving all his
evenings and odd moments to study and experiments.

Then came another red-letter day. He was growing depressed, and
feared that Sir Humphry had forgotten his quasi-promise, when one
evening a carriage stopped at the door, and out stepped an
important-looking footman in livery, with a note from the famous
scientist, requesting the young bookbinder to call on him on the
following morning. At last had come the answer to the prayer of
little Michael Faraday, as will come the answer to all who back
their prayers with patient, persistent hard work, in spite of
discouragement, disappointment, and failure. And when, on that
never-to-be-forgotten morning, he was engaged by the great
scientist at a salary of six dollars a week, with two rooms at the
top of the house, to wash bottles, clean the instruments, move
them to and from the lecture rooms, and make himself generally
useful in the laboratory and out of it, no happier youth could be
found in all London.

The door was open; not, indeed, wide, but sufficiently to allow
this ardent disciple to work his way into the innermost shrine of
the temple of science. Though it took years and years of plodding,
incessant work and study, and a devotion to purpose with which
nothing was allowed to interfere, it made Faraday, by virtue of
his marvelous discoveries in electricity, electro-magnetism, and
chemistry, a world benefactor, honored not only by his own country
and sovereign, but by other rulers and leading nations of the
earth, as one of the greatest chemists and natural philosophers of
his time.

So great has been his value to the scientific world, that his
theories are still a constant source of inspiration to the workers
in those great professions allied to electricity and chemistry. No
library is complete without his published works. What wonder that
Davy called Faraday his greatest discovery!





THE TRIUMPH OF CANOVA


The Villa d'Asola, the country residence of the Signor Falieri,
was in a state of unusual excitement. Some of the most
distinguished patricians of Venice had been bidden to a great
banquet, which was to surpass in magnificence any entertainment
ever before given, even by the wealthy and hospitable Signer
Falieri.

The feast was ready, the guests were assembled, when word came
from the confectioner, who had been charged to prepare the center
ornament for the table, that he had spoiled the piece.
Consternation reigned in the servants' hall. What was to be done?
The steward, or head servant, was in despair. He was responsible
for the table decorations, and the absence of the centerpiece
would seriously mar the arrangements. He wrung his hands and
gesticulated wildly. What should he do!

"If you will let me try, I think I can make something that will
do." The speaker was a delicate, pale-faced boy, about twelve
years old, who had been engaged to help in some of the minor
details of preparation for the great event. "You!" exclaimed the
steward, gazing in amazement at the modest, yet apparently
audacious lad before him. "And who are you?" "I am Antonio Canova,
the grandson of Pisano, the stonecutter." Desperately grasping at
even the most forlorn hope, the perplexed servant gave the boy
permission to try his hand at making a centerpiece.

Calling for some butter, with nimble fingers and the skill of a
practiced sculptor, in a short time the little scullion molded the
figure of a crouching lion. So perfect in proportion, so spirited
and full of life in every detail, was this marvelous butter lion
that it elicited a chorus of admiration from the delighted guests,
who were eager to know who the great sculptor was who had deigned
to expend his genius on such perishable material. Signor Falieri,
unable to gratify their curiosity, sent for his head servant, who
gave them the history of the centerpiece. Antonio was immediately
summoned to the banquet hall, where he blushingly received the
praises and congratulations of all present, and the promise of
Signer Falieri to become his patron, and thus enable him to
achieve fame as a sculptor.

Such, according to some biographers, was the turning point in the
career of Antonio Canova, who, from a peasant lad, born in the
little Venetian village of Possagno, rose to be the most
illustrious sculptor of his age.

Whether or not the story be true, it is certain that when the boy
was in his thirteenth year, Signer Falieri placed him in the
studio of Toretto, a Venetian sculptor, then living near Asola.
But it is equally certain that the fame which crowned Canova's
manhood, the title of Marquis of Ischia, the decorations and
honors so liberally bestowed upon him by the ruler of the Vatican,
kings, princes, and emperors, were all the fruits of his ceaseless
industry, high ideals, and unfailing enthusiasm.

The little Antonio began to draw almost as soon as he could hold a
pencil, and the gown of the dear old grandmother who so tenderly
loved him, and was so tenderly loved in return, often bore the
marks of baby fingers fresh from modeling in clay.

Antonio's father having died when the child was but three years
old, his grandfather, Pisano, hoped that he would succeed him as
village stonecutter and sculptor. Delicate though the little
fellow had been from birth, at nine years of age he was laboring,
as far as his strength would permit, in Pisano's workshop. But in
the evening, after the work of the day was done, with pencil or
clay he tried to give expression to the poetic fancies he had
imbibed from the ballads and legends of his native hills, crooned
to him in infancy by his grandmother.

Under Toretto his genius developed so rapidly that the sculptor
spoke of one of his creations as "a truly marvelous production."
He was then only thirteen. Later we find him in Venice, studying
and working with ever increasing zeal. Though Signor Falieri would
have been only too glad to supply the youth's needs, he was too
proud to be dependent on others. Speaking of this time, he says:
"I labored for a mere pittance, but it was sufficient. It was the
fruit of my own resolution, and, as I then flattered myself, the
foretaste of more honorable rewards, for I never thought of
wealth."

Too poor to hire a workshop or studio, through the kindness of the
monks of St. Stefano, he was given a cell in a vacant monastery,
and here, at the age of sixteen, he started business as a sculptor
on his own account.

Before he was twenty, the youth had become a master of anatomy,
which he declared was "the secret of the art," was thoroughly
versed in literature, languages, history, poetry, mythology,--
everything that could help to make him the greatest sculptor of
his age,--and had, even then, produced works of surpassing merit.

Effort to do better was the motto of his life, and he never
permitted a day to pass without making some advance in his
profession. Though often too poor to buy the marble in which to
embody his conceptions, he for many years lived up to a resolution
made about this time, never to close his eyes at night without
having produced some design.

What wonder that at twenty-five this noble youth, whose incessant
toil had perfected genius, was the marvel of his age! What wonder
that his famous group, Theseus vanquishing the Minotaur, elicited
the enthusiastic admiration of the most noted art critics of Rome!
What wonder that the little peasant boy, who had first opened his
eyes, in 1757, in a mud cabin, closed them at last, in 1822, in a
marble palace, crowned with all of fame and honor and wealth the
world could give! But better still, he was loved and enshrined in
the hearts of the people, as a friend of the poor, a patron of
struggling merit, a man in whom nobility of character overtopped
even the genius of the artist.





FRANKLIN'S LESSON ON TIME VALUE

    Dost thou love life? Then, do not squander time, for
    that is the stuff life is made of!--FRANKLIN.


Franklin not only understood the value of time, but he put a price
upon it that made others appreciate its worth.

A customer who came one day to his little bookstore in
Philadelphia, not being satisfied with the price demanded by the
clerk for the book he wished to purchase, asked for the
proprietor. "Mr. Franklin is very busy just now in the press
room," replied the clerk. The man, however, who had already spent
an hour aimlessly turning over books, insisted on seeing him. In
answer to the clerk's summons, Mr. Franklin hurried out from the
newspaper establishment at the back of the store.

"What is the lowest price you can take for this book, sir?" asked
the leisurely customer, holding up the volume. "One dollar and a
quarter," was the prompt reply. "A dollar and a quarter! Why, your
clerk asked me only a dollar just now." "True," said Franklin,
"and I could have better afforded to take a dollar than to leave
my work."

The man, who seemed to be in doubt as to whether Mr. Franklin was
in earnest, said jokingly, "Well, come now, tell me your lowest
price for this book." "One dollar and a half," was the grave
reply. "A dollar and a half! Why, you just offered it for a dollar
and a quarter." "Yes, and I could have better taken that price
then than a dollar and a half now."

Without another word, the crestfallen purchaser laid the money on
the counter and left the store. He had learned not only that he
who squanders his own time is foolish, but that he who wastes the
time of others is a thief.





FROM STORE BOY TO MILLIONAIRE


"But I am only nineteen years old, Mr. Riggs," and the speaker
looked questioningly into the eyes of his companion, as if he
doubted his seriousness in asking him to become a partner in his
business.

Mr. Riggs was not joking, however, and he met George Peabody's
perplexed gaze smilingly, as he replied: "That is no objection. If
you are willing to go in with me and put your labor against my
capital, I shall be well satisfied."

This was the turning point in a life which was to leave its
impress on two of the world's greatest nations. And what were the
experiences that led to it? They were utterly commonplace, and in
some respects such as fall to the lot of many country boys to-day.

At eleven the lad was obliged to earn his own living. At that time
(1806), his native town, Danvers, Massachusetts, presented few
opportunities to the ambitious. He took the best that offered--a
position as store boy in the village grocer's.

Four years of faithful work and constant effort at self-culture
followed. He was now fifteen. His ambition was growing. He must
seek a wider field. Another year passed, and then came the longed-
for opening. Joyfully the youth set out for his brother's store,
in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Here he felt he would have a better
chance. But disappointment and disaster were lurking round the
corner. Soon after he had taken up his new duties, the store was
burned to the ground.

In the meantime, his father had died, and his mother, whom he
idolized, needed his help more than ever. Penniless and out of
work, but not disheartened, he immediately looked about for
another position. Gladly he accepted an offer to work in his
uncle's dry goods store in Georgetown, D.C., and here we find him,
two years later, at the time when Mr. Riggs made his flattering
proposition.

Did influence, a "pull," or financial considerations have anything
to do with the merchant's choice of a partner? Nothing whatever.
The young man had no money and no "pull," save what his character
had made for him. His agreeable personality had won him many
friends and his uncle much additional trade. His business
qualities had gained him an enviable reputation. "His tact," says
Sarah K. Bolton, "was unusual. He never wounded the feelings of a
buyer of goods, never tried him with unnecessary talk, never
seemed impatient, and was punctual to the minute."

That Mr. Riggs had made no mistake in choosing his partner, the
rapid growth of his business conclusively proved. About a year
after the partnership had been formed, the firm moved to
Baltimore. So well did the business flourish in Baltimore that
within seven years the partners had established branch houses in
New York and Philadelphia. Finally Mr. Riggs decided to retire,
and Peabody, who was then but thirty-five, found himself at the
head of the business.

London, which he had visited several times, now attracted him. It
offered great possibilities for banking. He went there, studied
finance, established a banking business, and thenceforth made
London his headquarters.

Wealth began to pour in upon him in a golden stream. But, although
he had worked steadily for this, it was not for personal ends. He
never married, and, to the end, lived simply and unostentatiously.
Through the long years of patient work a great purpose had been
shaping his life. Daily he had prayed that God might give him
means wherewith to help his fellow-men. His prayer was being
answered in overflowing measure.

Business interests constrained him to spend the latter half of his
life in London; but absence only deepened his love for his own
country. All that great wealth could do to advance the welfare and
prestige of the United States was done by the millionaire
philanthropist. But above all else, he tried to bring within the
reach of poor children that which was denied himself,--a school
education.

The Peabody Institute in his native town, with its free library
and free course of lectures; the Institute, Academy of Music, and
Art Gallery of Baltimore; the Museum of Natural History at Yale
University; the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard
University; the Peabody Academy of Science at Salem,
Massachusetts, besides large contributions every year to libraries
and other educational and philanthropic institutions all over the
country, bear witness to his love for humanity.

Surpassing all this, however, was his establishment of the Peabody
fund of three million dollars for the education of the freed
slaves of the South, and for the equally needy poor of the white
race.

An equal amount had been previously devoted to the better housing
of the London poor. A dream almost too good to come true it seemed
to the toilers in the great city's slums, when they found their
filthy, unhealthy tenements replaced by clean, wholesome
dwellings, well supplied with air and sunlight and all modern
conveniences and comforts. London presented its generous
benefactor with the freedom of the city; a bronze statue was
erected in his honor, and Queen Victoria, who would fain have
loaded him with titles and honors,--all of which he respectfully
declined,--declared his act to be "wholly without parallel." A
beautiful miniature portrait of her Majesty, which she caused to
be specially made for him, and a letter written by her own hand,
were the only gifts he would accept.

Gloriously had his great purpose been fulfilled. He who began life
as a poor boy had given to the furtherance of education and for
the benefit of the poor in various ways the sum of nine million
dollars. The remaining four million dollars of his fortune was
divided among his relatives.

England loved and honored him even as his own country did; and
when he died in London, November 4, 1869, she offered him a
resting place among her immortals in Westminster Abbey. His last
wish, however, was fulfilled, and he was laid beside his mother in
his native land.

His legacies to humanity are doing their splendid work to-day as
they have done in the past, and as they will continue to do in the
future, enabling multitudes of aspiring souls to reach heights
which but for him they never could have attained. These words of
his, too, spoken on the occasion of the dedication of his gift to
Danvers,--its free Institute,--will serve for ages as a bugle call
to all youths who are anxious to make the most of themselves, and,
like him, to give of their best to the world:--

"Though Providence has granted me an unvaried and unusual success
in the pursuit of fortune in other lands," he said, "I am still in
heart the humble boy who left yonder unpretending dwelling many,
very many years ago. ... There is not a youth within the sound of
my voice whose early opportunities and advantages are not very
much greater than were my own; and I have since achieved nothing
that is impossible to the most humble boy among you. Bear in mind,
that, to be truly great, it is not necessary that you should gain
wealth and importance. Steadfast and undeviating truth, fearless
and straightforward integrity, and an honor ever unsullied by an
unworthy word or action, make their possessor greater than worldly
success or prosperity. These qualities constitute greatness."





"I WILL PAINT OR DIE!"

HOW A POOR, UNTAUGHT FARMER'S BOY BECAME AN ARTIST


"I will paint or die!" So stoutly resolved a poor, friendless boy,
on a far-away Ohio farm, amid surroundings calculated to quench
rather than to foster ambition. He knew not how his object was to
be accomplished, for genius is never fettered by details. He only
knew that he would be an artist. That settled it. He had never
seen a work of art, or read or heard anything on the subject. It
was his soul's voice alone that spoke, and "the soul's emphasis is
always right."

Left an orphan at the age of eleven, the boy agreed to work on his
uncle's farm for a term of five years for the munificent sum of
ten dollars per annum, the total amount of which he was to receive
at the end of the five years. The little fellow struggled bravely
along with the laborious farm work, never for a moment losing
sight of his ideal, and profiting as he could by the few months'
schooling snatched from the duties of the farm during the winter.

Toward the close of his five years' service a great event
happened. There came to the neighborhood an artist from
Washington,--Mr. Uhl, whom he overheard by chance speaking on the
subject of art. His words transformed the dream in the youth's
soul to a living purpose, and it was then he resolved that he
would "paint or die," and that he would go to Washington and study
under Mr. Uhl.

On his release from the farm he started for Washington, with a
coarse outfit packed away in a shabby little trunk, and a few
dollars in his pocket. With the trustfulness of extreme youth, and
in ignorance of a great world, he expected to get work that would
enable him to live, and, at the same time, find leisure for the
pursuit of his real life work. He immediately sought Mr. Uhl, who,
with great generosity, offered to teach him without charge.

Then began the weary search for work in a large city already
overcrowded with applicants. In his earnestness and eagerness the
youth went from house to house asking for any kind of work "that
would enable him to study art." But it was all in vain, and to
save himself from starvation he was at length forced to accept the
position of a day laborer, crushing stones for street paving. Yet
he hoped to study painting when his day's work was done!

Mr. Uhl was at this time engaged in painting the portraits of Mrs.
Frances Hodgson Burnett's sons. In the course of conversation with
Mrs. Burnett, he spoke of the heroic struggle the youth was
making. The author's heart was touched by the pathetic story. She
at once wrote a check for one hundred dollars, and handed it to
Mr. Uhl, for his protege. With that rare delicacy of feeling which
marks all beautiful souls, Mrs. Burnett did not wish to embarrass
the struggler by the necessity of thanking her. "Do not let him
even write to me," she said to Mr. Uhl. "Simply say to him that I
shall sail for Europe in a few days, and this is to give him a
chance to work at the thing he cares for so much. It will at least
give him a start."

In the throbbing life of the crowded city one heart beat high with
hope and happiness that night. A youth lay awake until morning,
too bewildered with gratitude and amazement to comprehend the
meaning of the good fortune which had come to him. Who could his
benefactor be?

Three years later, at the annual exhibition of Washington artists,
Mrs. Burnett stood before a remarkably vivid portrait. Addressing
the artist in charge of the exhibition, she said: "That seems to
me very strong. It looks as if it must be a realistic likeness.
Who did it?"

"I am so glad you like it. It was painted by your protege, Mrs.
Burnett."

"My protege! My protege! Whom do you mean?"

"Why, the young man you saved from despair three years ago. Don't
you remember young W---?"

"W---?" queried Mrs. Burnett.

"The young man whose story Mr. Uhl told you."

Mrs. Burnett then inquired if the portrait was for sale. When
informed that the picture was an order and not for sale, she asked
if there was anything else of Mr. W---'s on exhibition. She was
conducted to a striking picture of a turbaned head, which was
pointed out as another of Mr. W---'s works.

"How much does he ask for it?"

"A hundred and fifty dollars."

"Put 'sold' upon it, and when Mr. W--- comes, tell him his friend
has bought his picture," said Mrs. Burnett.

On her return home Mrs. Burnett made out a check, which she
inclosed in a letter to the young painter. It was mailed
simultaneously with a letter from her protege, who had but just
heard of her return from Europe, in which he begged her to accept,
as a slight expression of his gratitude, the picture she had just
purchased. The turbaned head now adorns the hall of Mrs. Burnett's
house in Washington.

"I do not understand it even to-day," declares Mr. W---. "I knew
nothing of Mrs. Burnett, nor she of me. Why did she do it? I only
know that that hundred dollars was worth more to me then than
fifty thousand in gold would be now. I lived upon it a whole year,
and it put me on my feet."

Mr. W--- is a successful artist, now favorably known in his own
country and in England for the strength and promise of his work.





THE CALL THAT SPEAKS IN THE BLOOD


Nature took the measure of little Tommy Edwards for a round hole,
but his parents, teachers, and all with whom his childhood was
cast, got it into their heads that Tommy was certainly intended
for a square hole. So, with the best intentions in the world,--but
oh, such woeful ignorance!--they tortured the poor little fellow
and crippled him for life by trying to fit him to their pattern
instead of that designed for him by the all-wise Mother.

Mother Nature called to Tommy to go into the woods and fields, to
wade through the brooks, and make friends with all the living
things she had placed there,--tadpoles, beetles, frogs, crabs,
mice, rats, spiders, bugs,--everything that had life. Willingly,
lovingly did the little lad obey, but only to be whipped and
scolded by good Mother Edwards when he let loose in her kitchen
the precious treasures which he had collected in his rambles.

It was provoking to have rats, mice, toads, bugs, and all sorts of
creepy things sent sprawling over one's clean kitchen floor. But
the pity of it was that Mrs. Edwards did not understand her boy,
and thought the only cure for what she deemed his mischievous
propensity as whipping. So Tommy was whipped and scolded, and
scolded and whipped, which, however, did not in the least abate
his love for Nature.

Driven to desperation, his mother bethought her of a plan. She
would make the boy prisoner and see if this would tame him. With a
stout rope she tied him by the leg to a table, and shut him in a
room alone. But no sooner was the door closed than he dragged
himself and the table to the fireplace, and, at the risk of
setting himself and the house on fire, burned the rope which bound
him, and made his escape into the woods to collect new specimens.

And yet his parents did not understand. It was time, however, to
send him to school. They would see what the schoolmaster would do
for him. But the schoolmaster was as blind as the parents, and
Tommy's doom was sealed, when one morning, while the school was at
prayers, a jackdaw poked its head out of his pocket and began to
caw.

His next teacher misunderstood, whipped, and bore with him until
one day nearly every boy in the school found a horse-leech
wriggling up his leg, trying to suck his blood. This ended his
second school experience.

He was given a third trial, but with no better results than
before. Things went on in the usual way until a centipede was
discovered in another boy's desk. Although in this case Tommy was
innocent of any knowledge of the intruder, he was found guilty,
whipped, and sent home with the message, "Go and tell your father
to get you on board a man-of-war, as that is the best school for
irreclaimables such as you."

His school life thus ended, he was apprenticed to a shoemaker, and
thenceforth made his living at the bench. But every spare moment
was given to the work which was meat and drink, life itself, to
him.

In his manhood, to enable him to classify the minute and copious
knowledge of birds, beasts, and insects which he had been
gathering since childhood, with great labor and patience he
learned how to read and write. Later, realizing how his lack of
education hampered him, he endeavored to secure the means to
enable him to study to better advantage, and sold for twenty
pounds sterling a very large number of valuable specimens. He
tried to get employment as a naturalist, and, but for his poor
reading and writing, would have succeeded.

Poor little Scotch laddie! Had his parents or teachers understood
him, he might have been as great a naturalist as Agassiz, and his
life instead of being dwarfed and crippled, would have been a joy
to himself and an incalculable benefit to the world.





WASHINGTON'S YOUTHFUL HEROISM

     "No great deed is done
     By falterers who ask for certainty."


"God will give you a reward," solemnly spoke the grateful mother,
as she received from the arms of the brave youth the child he had
risked his life to save. As if her lips were touched with the
spirit of prophecy, she continued, "He will do great things for
you in return for this day's work, and the blessings of thousands
besides mine will attend you."

The ear of George Washington was ever open to the cry of distress;
his sympathy and aid were ever at the service of those who needed
them. One calm, sunny day, in the spring of 1750, he was dining
with other surveyors in a forest in Virginia. Suddenly the
stillness of the forest was startled by the piercing shriek of a
woman. Washington instantly sprang to his feet and hurried to the
woman's assistance.

"My boy, my boy,--oh, my poor boy is drowning, and they will not
let me go," screamed the frantic mother, as she tried to escape
from the detaining hands which withheld her from jumping into the
rapids. "Oh, sir!" she implored, as she caught sight of the manly
youth of eighteen, whose presence even then inspired confidence;
"Oh, sir, you will surely do something for me!"

For an instant Washington measured the rocks and the whirling
currents with a comprehensive look, and then, throwing off his
coat, plunged into the roaring rapids where he had caught a
glimpse of the drowning boy. With stout heart and steady hand he
struggled against the seething mass of waters which threatened
every moment to engulf or dash him to pieces against the sharp-
pointed rocks which lay concealed beneath.

Three times he had almost succeeded in grasping the child's dress,
when the force of the current drove him back. Then he gathered
himself together for one last effort. Just as the child was about
to escape him forever and be shot over the falls into the
whirlpool below, he clutched him. The spectators on the bank cried
out in horror. They gave both up for lost. But Washington seemed
to lead a charmed life, and the cry of horror was changed to one
of joy when, still holding the child, he emerged lower down from
the vortex of waters.

Striking out for a low place in the bank, within a few minutes he
reached the shore with his burden. Then amid the acclamations of
those who had witnessed his heroism, and the blessings of the
overjoyed mother, Washington placed the unconscious, but still
living, child in her arms.





A COW HIS CAPITAL


A cow! Now, of all things in the world; of what use was a cow to
an ambitious boy who wanted to go to college? Yet a cow, and
nothing more, was the capital, the entire stock in trade, of an
aspiring farmer boy who felt within him a call to another kind of
life than that his father led.

This youth, who was yet in his teens, next to his father and
mother, loved a book better than anything else in the world, and
his great ambition was to go to college, to become a "scholar."
Whether he followed the plow, or tossed hay under a burning July
sun, or chopped wood, while his blood tingled from the combined
effects of exercise and the keen December wind, his thoughts were
ever fixed on the problem, "How can I go to college?"

His parents were poor, and, while they could give him a
comfortable support as long as he worked on the farm with them,
they could not afford to send him to college. But if they could
not give him any material aid, they gave him all their sympathy,
which kept the fire of his resolution burning at white heat.

There is some subtle communication between the mind and the
spiritual forces of achievement which renders it impossible for
one to think for any great length of time on a tangled problem,
without a method for its untanglement being suggested. So, one
evening, while driving the cows home to be milked, the thought
flashed across the brain of the would-be student: "If I can't have
anything else for capital, why can't I have a cow? I could do
something with it, I am sure, and to college I MUST go, come what
will." Courage is more than half the battle. Decision and Energy
are its captains, and, when these three are united, victory is
sure. The problem of going to college was already more than half
solved.

Our youthful farmer did not let his thought grow cold. Hurrying at
once to his father, he said, "If you will give me a cow, I shall
feel free, with your permission, to go forth and see what I can do
for myself in the world." The father, agreeing to the proposition,
which seemed to him a practical one, replied heartily, "My son,
you shall have the best milch cow I own."

Followed by the prayers and blessings of his parents, the youth
started from home, driving his cow before him, his destination
being a certain academy between seventy-five and one hundred miles
distant.

Very soon he experienced the truth of the old adage that "Heaven
helps those who help themselves." At the end of his first day's
journey, when he sought a night's lodging for himself and
accommodation for his cow in return for her milk, he met with
unexpected kindness. The good people to whom he applied not only
refused to take anything from him, but gave him bread to eat with
his milk, and his cow a comfortable barn to lie in, with all the
hay she could eat.

During the entire length of his journey, he met with equal
kindness and consideration at the hands of all those with whom he
came in contact; and, when he reached the academy, the principal
and his wife were so pleased with his frank, modest, yet self-
confident bearing, that they at once adopted himself and his cow
into the family. He worked for his board, and the cow ungrudgingly
gave her milk for the general good.

In due time the youth was graduated with honors from the academy.
He was then ready to enter college, but had no money. The kind-
hearted principal of the academy and his wife again came to his
aid and helped him out of the difficulty by purchasing his cow.
The money thus obtained enabled him to take the next step forward.
He bade his good friends farewell, and the same year entered
college. For four years he worked steadily with hand and brain. In
spite of the hard work they were happy years, and at their close
the persevering student had won, in addition to his classical
degree, many new friends and well-wishers. His next step was to
take a theological course in another institution. When he had
finished the course, he was called to be principal of the academy
to which honest ambition first led him with his cow.

Years afterward a learned professor of Hebrew, and the author of a
scholarly "Commentary," cheered and encouraged many a struggling
youth by relating the story of his own experiences from the time
when he, a simple rustic, had started for college with naught but
a cow as capital.

This story was first related to the writer by the late Frances E.
Willard, who vouched for its truth.





THE BOY WHO SAID "I MUST"


Farther back than the memory of the grandfathers and grandmothers
of some of my young readers can go, there lived in a historic town
in Massachusetts a brave little lad who loved books and study more
than toys or games, or play of any kind. The dearest wish of his
heart was to be able to go to school every day, like more
fortunate boys and girls, so that, when he should grow up to be a
man, he might be well educated and fitted to do some grand work in
the world. But his help was needed at home, and, young as he was,
he began then to learn the lessons of unselfishness and duty. It
was hard, wasn't it, for a little fellow only eight years old to
have to leave off going to school and settle down to work on a
farm? Many young folks at his age think they are very badly
treated if they are not permitted to have some toy or story book,
or other thing on which they have set their hearts; and older boys
and girls, too, are apt to pout and frown if their whims are not
gratified. But Theodore's parents were very poor, and could not
even indulge his longing to go to school.

Did he give up his dreams of being a great man? Not a bit of it.
He did not even cry or utter a complaint, but manfully resolved
that he would do everything he could "to help father," and then,
"when winter comes," he thought, "I shall be able to go to school
again." Bravely the little fellow toiled through the beautiful
springtide, though his wistful glances were often turned in the
direction of the schoolhouse. But he resolutely bent to his work
and renewed his resolve that he would be educated. As spring
deepened into summer, the work on the farm grew harder and harder,
but Theodore rejoiced that the flight of each season brought
winter nearer.

At length autumn had vanished; the fruits of the spring and
summer's toil had been gathered; the boy was free to go to his
beloved studies again. And oh, how he reveled in the few books at
his command in the village school! How eagerly he trudged across
the fields, morning after morning, to the schoolhouse, where he
always held first place in his class! Blustering winds and fierce
snowstorms had no terrors for the ardent student. His only sorrow
was that winter was all too short, and the days freighted with the
happiness of regular study slipped all too quickly by. But the
kind-hearted schoolmaster lent him books, so that, when spring
came round again, and the boy had to go back to work, he could
pore over them in his odd moments of relaxation. As he patiently
plodded along, guiding the plow over the rough earth, he recited
the lessons he had learned during the brief winter season, and
after dinner, while the others rested awhile from their labors,
Theodore eagerly turned the pages of one of his borrowed books,
from which he drank in deep draughts of delight and knowledge.
Early in the summer mornings, before the regular work began, and
late in the evening, when the day's tasks had all been done, he
read and re-read his treasured volumes until he knew them from
cover to cover.

Then he was confronted with a difficulty. He had begun to study
Latin, but found it impossible to get along without a dictionary.
"What shall I do?" he thought; "there is no one from whom I can
borrow a Latin dictionary, and I cannot ask father to buy me one,
because he cannot afford it. But I MUST have it." That "must"
settled the question. Three quarters of a century ago, book stores
were few and books very costly. Boys and girls who have free
access to libraries and reading rooms, and can buy the best works
of great authors, sometimes for a few cents, can hardly imagine
the difficulties which beset the little farmer boy in trying to
get the book he wanted.

Did he get the dictionary? Oh, yes. You remember he had said, "I
must." After thinking and thinking how he could get the money to
buy it, a bright idea flashed across his mind. The bushes in the
fields about the farm seemed waiting for some one to pick the ripe
whortle-berries. "Why," thought he, "can't I gather and sell
enough to buy my dictionary?" The next morning, before any one
else in the farmhouse was astir, Theodore was moving rapidly
through the bushes, picking, picking, picking, with unwearied
fingers, the shining berries, every one of which was of greater
value in his eyes than a penny would be to some of you.

At last, after picking and selling several bushels of ripe
berries, he had enough money to buy the coveted dictionary. Oh,
what a joy it was to possess a book that had been purchased with
his own money! How it thrilled the boy and quickened his ambition
to renewed efforts! "Well done, my boy! But, Theodore, I cannot
afford to keep you there."

"Well, father," replied the youth, "but I am not going to study
there; I shall study at home at odd times, and thus prepare myself
for a final examination, which will give me a diploma."

Theodore had just returned from Boston, and was telling his
delighted father how he had spent the holiday which he had asked
for in the morning. Starting out early from the farm, so as to
reach Boston before the intense heat of the August day had set in,
he cheerfully tramped the ten miles that lay between his home in
Lexington and Harvard College, where he presented himself as a
candidate for admission; and when the examinations were over,
Theodore had the joy of hearing his name announced in the list of
successful students. The youth had reached the goal which the boy
of eight had dimly seen. And now, if you would learn how he worked
and taught in a country school in order to earn the money to spend
two years in college, and how the young man became one of the most
eminent preachers in America, you must read a complete biography
of Theodore Parker, the hero of this little story.





THE HIDDEN TREASURE


Long, long ago, in the shadowy past, Ali Hafed dwelt on the shores
of the River Indus, in the ancient land of the Hindus. His
beautiful cottage, set in the midst of fruit and flower gardens,
looked from the mountain side on which it stood over the broad
expanse of the noble river. Rich meadows, waving fields of grain,
and the herds and flocks contentedly grazing on the pasture lands,
testified to the thrift and prosperity of Ali Hafed. The love of a
beautiful wife and a large family of light-hearted boys and girls
made his home an earthly paradise. Healthy, wealthy, contented,
rich in love and friendship, his cup of happiness seemed full to
overflowing.

Happy and contented, as we have seen, was the good Ali Hafed, when
one evening a learned priest of Buddha, journeying along the banks
of the Indus, stopped for rest and refreshment at his home, where
all wayfarers were hospitably welcomed and treated as honored
guests.

After the evening meal, the farmer and his family, with the priest
in their midst, gathered around the fireside, the chilly mountain
air of the late autumn making a fire desirable. The disciple of
Buddha entertained his kind hosts with various legends and myths,
and last of all with the story of the creation.

He told his wondering listeners how in the beginning the solid
earth on which they lived was not solid at all, but a mere bank of
fog. "The Great Spirit," said he, "thrust his finger into the bank
of fog and began slowly describing a circle in its midst,
increasing the speed gradually until the fog went whirling round
his finger so rapidly that it was transformed into a glowing ball
of fire. Then the Creative Spirit hurled the fiery ball from his
hand, and it shot through the universe, burning its way through
other banks of fog and condensing them into rain, which fell in
great floods, cooling the surface of the immense ball. Flames then
bursting from the interior through the cooled outer crust, threw
up the hills and mountain ranges, and made the beautiful fertile
valleys. In the flood of rain that followed this fiery upheaval,
the substance that cooled very quickly formed granite, that which
cooled less rapidly became copper, the next in degree cooled down
into silver, and the last became gold. But the most beautiful
substance of all, the diamond, was formed by the first beams of
sunlight condensed on the earth's surface.

"A drop of sunlight the size of my thumb," said the priest,
holding up his hand, "is worth more than mines of gold. With one
such drop," he continued, turning to Ali Hafed, "you could buy
many farms like yours; with a handful you could buy a province,
and with a mine of diamonds you could purchase a whole kingdom."

The company parted for the night, and Ali Hafed went to bed, but
not to sleep. All night long he tossed restlessly from side to
side, thinking, planning, scheming how he could secure some
diamonds. The demon of discontent had entered his soul, and the
blessings and advantages which he possessed in such abundance
seemed as by some malicious magic to have utterly vanished.
Although his wife and children loved him as before; although his
farm, his orchards, his flocks, and herds were as real and
prosperous as they had ever been, yet the last words of the
priest, which kept ringing in his ears, turned his content into
vague longings and blinded him to all that had hitherto made him
happy.

Before dawn next morning the farmer, full of his purpose, was
astir. Rousing the priest, he eagerly inquired if he could direct
him to a mine of diamonds.

"A mine of diamonds!" echoed the astonished priest. "What do you,
who already have so much to be grateful for, want with diamonds?"

"I wish to be rich and place my children on thrones."

"All you have to do, then," said the Buddhist, "is to go and
search until you find them."

"But where shall I go?" questioned the infatuated man.

"Go anywhere," was the vague reply; "north, south, east, or west,
--anywhere."

"But how shall I know the place?" asked the farmer.

"When you find a river running over white sands between high
mountain ranges, in these white sands you will find diamonds.
There are many such rivers and many mines of diamonds waiting to
be discovered. All you have to do is to start out and go
somewhere--" and he waved his hand--"away, away!"

Ali Hafed's mind was full made up. "I will no longer," he thought,
"remain on a wretched farm, toiling day in and day out for a mere
subsistence, when acres of diamonds--untold wealth--may be had by
him who is bold enough to seek them."

He sold his farm for less than half its value. Then, after putting
his young family under the care of a neighbor, he set out on his
quest.

With high hopes and the coveted diamond mines beckoning in the far
distance, Ali Hafed began his wanderings. During the first few
weeks his spirits did not flag, nor did his feet grow weary. On,
and on, he tramped until he came to the Mountains of the Moon,
beyond the bounds of Arabia. Weeks stretched into months, and the
wanderer often looked regretfully in the direction of his once
happy home. Still no gleam of waters glinting over white sands
greeted his eyes. But on he went, into Egypt, through Palestine,
and other eastern lands, always looking for the treasure he still
hoped to find. At last, after years of fruitless search, during
which he had wandered north and south, east and west, hope left
him. All his money was spent. He was starving and almost naked,
and the diamonds--which had lured him away from all that made life
dear--where were they? Poor Ali Hafed never knew. He died by the
wayside, never dreaming that the wealth for which he had
sacrificed happiness and life might have been his had he remained
at home.

"Here is a diamond! here is a diamond! Has Ali Hafed returned?"
shouted an excited voice.

The speaker, no other than our old acquaintance, the Buddhist
priest, was standing in the same room where years before he had
told poor Ali Hafed how the world was made, and where diamonds
were to be found.

"No, Ali Hafed has not returned," quietly answered his successor.
"Neither is that which you hold in your hand a diamond; it is but
a pretty black pebble I picked up in my garden."

"I tell you," said the priest, excitedly, "this is a genuine
diamond. I know one when I see it. Tell me how and where you found
it?"

"One day," replied the farmer, slowly, "having led my camel into
the garden to drink, I noticed, as he put his nose into the water,
a sparkle of light coming from the white sand at the bottom of the
clear stream. Stooping down, I picked up the black pebble you now
hold, guided to it by that crystal eye in the center from which
the light flashes so brilliantly."

"Why, thou simple one," cried the priest, "this is no common
stone, but a gem of the purest water. Come, show me where thou
didst find it."

Together they flew to the spot where the farmer had found the
"pebble," and, turning over the white sands with eager fingers,
they found, to their great delight, other stones even more
valuable and beautiful than the first. Then they extended their
search, and, so the Oriental story goes, "every shovelful of the
old farm, as acre after acre was sifted over, revealed gems with
which to decorate the crowns of emperors and moguls."





LOVE TAMED THE LION

    I would not enter on my list of friends,
    (Though graced with polished manners and fine sense,
    Yet wanting sensibility), the man
    Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
                                                 COWPER.


"Nero!" Crushed, baffled, blinded, and, like Samson, shorn of his
strength, prostrate in his cage lay the great tawny monarch of the
forest. Heedless of the curious crowds passing to and fro, he
seemed deaf as well as blind to everything going on around him.
Perhaps he was dreaming of the jungle. Perhaps he was longing to
roam the wilds once more in his native strength. Perhaps memories
of a happy past even in captivity stirred him. Perhaps--But what
is this? What change has come o'er the spirit of his dreams? No
one has touched him. Apparently, nothing has happened to arouse
him. Only a woman's voice, soft, caressing, full of love, has
uttered the name, "Nero." But there was magic in the sound. In an
instant the huge animal was on his feet. Quivering with emotion,
he rushed to the side of the cage from whence the voice proceeded,
and threw himself against the bars with such violence that he fell
back half stunned. As he fell he uttered the peculiar note of
welcome with which, in happier days, he was wont to greet his
loved and long-lost mistress.

Touched with the devotion of her dumb friend, Rosa Bonheur--for
it was she who had spoken--released from bondage the faithful
animal whom, years before, she had bought from a keeper who
declared him untamable.

"In order to secure the affections of wild animals," said the
great-hearted painter, "you must love them," and by love she had
subdued the ferocious beast whom even the lion-tamers had given up
as hopeless.

When about to travel for two years, it being impossible to take
her pet with her, Mademoiselle Bonheur sold him to the Jardin des
Plantes in Paris, where she found him on her return, totally
blind, owing, it is said, to the ill treatment of the attendant.

Grieved beyond measure at the condition of poor Nero, she had him
removed to her chateau, where everything was done for his comfort
that love could suggest. Often in her leisure moments, when she
had laid aside her painting garb, the artist would have him taken
to her studio, where she would play with and fondle the enormous
creature as if he were a kitten. And there, at last, he died
happily, his great paws clinging fondly to the mistress who loved
him so well, his sightless eyes turned upon her to the end, as if
beseeching that she would not again leave him.





"THERE IS ROOM ENOUGH AT THE TOP"


These words ere uttered many years ago by a youth who had no other
means by which to reach the top than work and will. They have
since become the watchword of every poor boy whose ambition is
backed by energy and a determination to make the most possible of
himself.

The occasion on which Daniel Webster first said "There is room
enough at the top," marked the turning point in his life. Had he
not been animated at that time by an ambition to make the most of
his talents, he might have remained forever in obscurity.

His father and other friends had secured for him the position of
Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas, of Hillsborough County, New
Hampshire. Daniel was studying law in the office of Mr.
Christopher Gore, a distinguished Boston lawyer, and was about
ready for his admission to the bar. The position offered him was
worth fifteen hundred dollars a year. This seemed a fortune to the
struggling student. He lay awake the whole night following the day
on which he had heard the good news, planning what he would do for
his father and mother, his brother Ezekiel, and his sisters. Next
morning he hurried to the office to tell Mr. Gore of his good
fortune.

"Well, my young friend," said the lawyer, when Daniel had told his
story, "the gentlemen have been very kind to you; I am glad of it.
You must thank them for it. You will write immediately, of
course."

Webster explained that, since he must go to New Hampshire
immediately, it would hardly be worth while to write. He could
thank his good friends in person.

"Why," said Mr. Gore in great astonishment, "you don't mean to
accept it, surely!"

The youth's high spirits were damped at once by his senior's
manner. "The bare idea of not accepting it," he says, "so
astounded me that I should have been glad to have found any hole
to have hid myself in."

"Well," said Mr. Gore, seeing the disappointment his words had
caused, "you must decide for yourself; but come, sit down and let
us talk it over. The office is worth fifteen hundred a year, you
say. Well, it never will be any more. Ten to one, if they find out
it is so much, the fees will be reduced. You are appointed now by
friends; others may fill their places who are of different
opinions, and who have friends of their own to provide for. You
will lose your place; or, supposing you to retain it, what are you
but a clerk for life? And your prospects as a lawyer are good
enough to encourage you to go on. Go on, and finish your studies;
you are poor enough, but there are greater evils than poverty;
live on no man's favor; what bread you do eat, let it be the bread
of independence; pursue your profession, make yourself useful to
your friends and a little formidable to your enemies, and you have
nothing to fear."

How fortunate Webster as to have at this point in his career so
wise and far-seeing a friend! His father, who had made many
sacrifices to educate his boys, saw in the proffered clerkship a
great opening for his favorite, Daniel. He never dreamed of the
future that was to make him one of America's greatest orators and
statesmen. At first he could not believe that the position which
he had worked so hard to obtain was to be rejected.

"Daniel, Daniel," he said sorrowfully, "don't you mean to take
that office?"

"No, indeed, father," was the reply, "I hope I can do much better
than that. I mean to use my tongue in the courts, not my pen; to
be an actor, not a register of other men's acts. I hope yet, sir,
to astonish your honor in your own court by my professional
attainments."

Judge Webster made no attempt to conceal his disappointment. He
even tried to discourage his son by reminding him that there were
already more lawyers than the country needed.

It was in answer to this objection that Daniel used the famous and
oft-quoted words,--"There is room enough at the top."

"Well, my son," said the fond but doubting father, "your mother
has always said you would come to something or nothing. She was
not sure which; I think you are now about settling that doubt for
her."

It was very painful to Daniel to disappoint his father, but his
purpose was fixed, and nothing now could change it. He knew he had
turned his face in the right direction, and though when he
commenced to practice law he earned only about five or six hundred
dollars a year, he never regretted the decision he had made. He
aimed high, and he had his reward.

It is true now and forever, as Lowell says, that--

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





THE UPLIFT OF A SLAVE BOY'S IDEAL

Invincible determination, and a right nature, are the levers that
move the world.--PORTER.


Born a slave, with the feelings and possibilities of a man, but
with no rights above the beast of the field, Fred Douglass gave
the world one of the most notable examples of man's power over
circumstances.

He had no knowledge of his father, whom he had never seen. He had
only a dim recollection of his mother, from whom he had been
separated at birth. The poor slave mother used to walk twelve
miles when her day's work was done, in order to get an occasional
glimpse of her child. Then she had to walk back to the plantation
on which she labored, so as to be in time to begin to work at dawn
next morning.

Under the brutal discipline of the "Aunt Katy" who had charge of
the slaves who were still too young to labor in the fields, he
early began to realize the hardships of his lot, and to rebel
against the state of bondage into which he had been born.

Often hungry, and clothed in hottest summer and coldest winter
alike, in a coarse tow linen shirt, scarcely reaching to the
knees, without a bed to lie on or a blanket to cover him, his only
protection, no matter how cold the night, was an old corn bag,
into which he thrust himself, leaving his feet exposed at one end,
and his head at the other.

When about seven years old, he was transferred to new owners in
Baltimore, where his kind-hearted mistress, who did not know that
in doing so she was breaking the law, taught him the alphabet. He
thus got possession of the key which was to unlock his bonds, and,
young as he was, he knew it. It did not matter that his master,
when he