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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Stories from Life
+by Marden vice Harden
+
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+Title: Stories from Life
+
+Author: Marden vice Harden
+
+Release Date: October, 2003  [Etext #4597]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on February 13, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Stories from Life
+by Marden vice Harden
+******This file should be named sflif10.txt or sflif10.zip******
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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 learned what had been done, forbade his wife to give the
+boy further instructions. He had already tasted of the fruit of
+the tree of knowledge. The prohibition was useless. Neither
+threats nor stripes nor chains could hold the awakened soul in
+bondage.
+
+With infinite pains and patience, and by stealth, he enlarged upon
+his knowledge of the alphabet. An old copy of "Webster's Spelling
+Book," cast aside by his young master, as his greatest treasure.
+With the aid of a few good-natured white boys, who sometimes
+played with him in the streets, he quickly mastered its contents.
+Then he cast about for further means to satisfy his mental
+craving. How difficult it was for the poor, despised slave to do
+this, we learn from his own pathetic words. "I have gathered," he
+says, "scattered pages of the Bible from the filthy street
+gutters, and washed and dried them, that, in moments of leisure, I
+might get a word or two of wisdom from them."
+
+Think of that, boys and girls of the twentieth century, with your
+day schools and evening schools, libraries, colleges, and
+universities,--picking reading material from the gutter and
+mastering it by stealth! Yet this boy grew up to be the friend and
+co-worker of Garrison and Phillips, the eloquent spokesman of his
+race, the honored guest of distinguished peers and commoners of
+England, one of the noblest examples of a self-made man that the
+world has ever seen.
+
+Under equal hardships he learned to write. The boy's wits,
+sharpened instead of blunted by repression, saw opportunities
+where more favored children could see none. He gave himself his
+first writing lesson in his master's shipyard, by copying from the
+various pieces of timber the letters with which they had been
+marked by the carpenters, to show the different parts of the ship
+for which they were intended. He copied from posters on fences,
+from old copy books, from anything and everything he could get
+hold of. He practiced his new art on pavements and rails, and
+entered into contests in letter making with white boys, in order
+to add to his knowledge. "With playmates for my teachers," he
+says, "fences and pavements for my copy books, and chalk for my
+pen and ink, I learned to write."
+
+While being "broken in" to field labor under the lash of the
+overseer, chained and imprisoned for the crime of attempting to
+escape from slavery, the spirit of the youth never quailed. He
+believed in himself, in his God-given powers, and he was
+determined to use them in freeing himself and his race.
+
+How well he succeeded in the stupendous task to which he set
+himself while yet groping in the black night of bondage, with no
+human power outside of his own indomitable will to help him, his
+life work attests in language more enduring than "storied urn" or
+written history. A roll call of the world's great moral heroes
+would be incomplete without the name of the slave-born Douglass,
+who came on the stage of life to play the leading role of the
+Moses of his race in one of the saddest and, at the same time,
+most glorious eras of American history.
+
+He was born in Talbot County, Maryland. The exact date of his
+birth is not known; but he himself thought it was in February,
+1817. He died in Washington, D.C., February 20, 1895.
+
+
+
+
+
+"TO THE FIRST ROBIN"
+
+
+The air was keen and biting, and traces of snow still lingered on
+the ground and sparkled on the tree tops in the morning sun. But
+the happy, rosy-cheeked children, lately freed from the restraints
+of city life, who played in the old garden in Concord,
+Massachusetts, that bright spring morning many years ago, heeded
+not the biting wind or the lingering snow. As they raced up and
+down the paths, in and out among the trees, their cheeks took on a
+deeper glow, their eyes a brighter sparkle, while their shouts of
+merry laughter made the morning glad.
+
+But stay, what is this? What has happened to check the laughter on
+their lips, and dim their bright eyes with tears? The little
+group, headed by Louisa, has suddenly come to a pause under a
+tree, where a wee robin, half dead with hunger and cold, has
+fallen from its perch.
+
+"Poor, poor birdie!" exclaimed a chorus of pitying voices. "It is
+dead, poor little thing," said Anna. "No," said Louisa, the leader
+of the children in fun and works of mercy alike; "it is warm, and
+I can feel its heart beat." As she spoke, she gathered the tiny
+bundle of feathers to her bosom, and, heading the little
+procession, turned toward the house.
+
+A warm nest was made for the foundling, and, with motherly care,
+the little Louisa May Alcott, then only eight years old, fed and
+nursed back to life the half-famished bird.
+
+Before the feathered claimant on her mercy flew away to freedom,
+the future authoress, the "children's friend," who loved and
+pitied all helpless things, wrote her first poem, and called it
+"To the First Robin." It contained only these two stanzas:--
+
+    "Welcome, welcome, little stranger,
+    Fear no harm, and fear no danger,
+    We are glad to see you here,
+    For you sing, 'Sweet spring is near.'
+
+    "Now the white snow melts away,
+    Now the flowers blossom gay,
+    Come, dear bird, and build your nest,
+    For we love our robin best."
+
+
+
+
+
+THE "WIZARD" AS AN EDITOR
+
+
+Although he had only a few months' regular schooling, at ten
+Thomas Alva Edison had read and thought more than many youths of
+twenty. Gibbon's "Rome," Hume's "England," Sears's "History of the
+World," besides several books on chemistry,--a subject in which
+he was even then deeply interested,--were familiar friends. Yet he
+was not, by any means, a serious bookworm. On the contrary, he was
+as full of fun and mischief as any healthy boy of his age.
+
+The little fellow's sunny face and pleasing manners made him a
+general favorite, and when circumstances forced him from the
+parent nest into the big bustling world at the age of twelve, he
+became the most popular train boy on the Grand Trunk Railroad in
+central Michigan, while his keen powers of observation and
+practical turn of mind made him the most successful. His ambition
+soared far beyond the selling of papers, song books, apples, and
+peanuts, and his business ability was such that he soon had three
+or four boys selling his wares on commission.
+
+His interest in chemistry, however, had not abated, and his busy
+brain now urged him to try new fields. He exchanged some of his
+papers for retorts and other simple apparatus, bought a copy of
+Fiesenius's "Qualitative Analysis," and secured the use of an old
+baggage car as a laboratory. Here, surrounded by chemicals and
+experimenting apparatus, he spent some of the happiest hours of
+his life.
+
+But even this was not a sufficient outlet for the energies of the
+budding inventor. Selling papers had naturally aroused his
+interest in printing and editing, and with Edison interest always
+manifested itself in action. In buying papers, he had, as usual,
+made use of his eyes, and, with the little knowledge of printing
+picked up in this way, he determined to start a printing press and
+edit a paper of his own.
+
+He first purchased a quantity of old type from the Detroit Free
+Press. Then he put a printing press in the baggage car, which did
+duty as printing and editorial office as well as laboratory, and
+began his editorial labors. When the first copy of the Grand Trunk
+Herald was put on sale, it would be hard to find a happier boy
+than its owner was.
+
+No matter that the youthful editor's "Associated Press" consisted
+of baggage men and brakemen, or that the literary matter
+contributed to the Grand Trunk Herald was chiefly railway gossip,
+with some general information of interest to passengers, the
+little three-cent sheet became very popular. Even the great London
+Times deigned to notice it, as the only journal in the world
+printed on a railway train.
+
+But, successful as he was in his editorial venture, Edison's best
+love was given to chemistry and electricity, which latter subject
+he had begun to study with his usual ardor. And well it was for
+the world when the youth of sixteen gave up train and newspaper
+work, that no poverty, no difficulties, no ridicule, no "hard
+luck," none of the trials and obstacles he had to encounter in
+after life, had power to chill or discourage the genius of the
+master inventor of the nineteenth century.
+
+
+
+
+
+HOW GOOD FORTUNE CAME TO PIERRE
+
+
+Many years ago, in a shabby room in one of the poorest streets of
+London, a little golden-haired boy sat singing, in his sweet,
+childish voice, by the bedside of his sick mother. Though faint
+from hunger and oppressed with loneliness, he manfully forced back
+the tears that kept welling up into his blue eyes, and, for his
+mother's sake, tried to look bright and cheerful. But it was hard
+to be brave and strong while his dear mother was suffering for
+lack of the delicacies which he longed to provide for her, but
+could not. He had not tasted food all day himself. How he could
+drive away the gaunt, hungry wolf, Famine, that had come to take
+up its abode with them, was the thought that haunted him as he
+tried to sing a little song he himself had composed. He left his
+place by the invalid, who, lulled by his singing, had fallen into
+a light sleep. As he looked listlessly out of the window, he
+noticed a man putting up a large poster, which bore, in staring
+yellow letters, the announcement that Madame M---, one of the
+greatest singers that ever lived, was to sing in public that
+night.
+
+"Oh, if I could only go!" thought little Pierre, his love of music
+for the moment making him forgetful of aught else. Suddenly his
+face brightened, and the light of a great resolve shone in his
+eyes. "I will try it," he said to himself; and, running lightly to
+a little stand that stood at the opposite end of the room, with
+trembling hands he took from a tiny box a roll of paper. With a
+wistful, loving glance at the sleeper, he stole from the room and
+hurried out into the street.
+
+"Who did you say is waiting for me?" asked Madame M--- of her
+servant; "I am already worn out with company."
+
+"It is only a very pretty little boy with yellow curls, who said
+that if he can just see you, he is sure you will not be sorry, and
+he will not keep you a moment."
+
+"Oh, well, let him come," said the great singer, with a kindly
+smile, "I can never refuse children."
+
+Timidly the child entered the luxurious apartment, and, bowing
+before the beautiful, stately woman, he began rapidly, lest his
+courage should fail him: "I came to see you because my mother is
+very sick, and we are too poor to get food and medicine. I
+thought, perhaps, that if you would sing my little song at some of
+your grand concerts, maybe some publisher would buy it for a small
+sum, and so I could get food and medicine for my mother."
+
+Taking the little roll of paper which the boy held in his hand,
+the warm-hearted singer lightly hummed the air. Then, turning
+toward him, she asked, in amazement: "Did you compose it? you, a
+child! And the words, too?" Without waiting for a reply, she added
+quickly, "Would you like to come to my concert this evening?" The
+boy's face became radiant with delight at the thought of hearing
+the famous songstress, but a vision of his sick mother, lying
+alone in the poor, cheerless room, flitted across his mind, and he
+answered, with a choking in his throat:--
+
+"Oh, yes; I should so love to go, but I couldn't leave my mother."
+
+"I will send somebody to take care of your mother for the evening,
+and here is a crown with which you may go and get food and
+medicine. Here is also one of my tickets. Come to-night; that will
+admit you to a seat near me."
+
+Overcome with joy, the child could scarcely express his gratitude
+to the gracious being who seemed to him like an angel from heaven.
+As he went out again into the crowded street, he seemed to tread
+on air. He bought some fruit and other little delicacies to tempt
+his mother's appetite, and while spreading out the feast of good
+things before her astonished gaze, with tears in his eyes, he told
+her of the kindness of the beautiful lady.
+
+An hour later, tingling with expectation, Pierre set out for the
+concert. How like fairyland it all seemed! The color, the dazzling
+lights, the flashing gems and glistening silks of the richly
+dressed ladies bewildered him. Ah! could it be possible that the
+great artist who had been so kind to him would sing his little
+song before this brilliant audience? At length she came on the
+stage, bowing right and left in answer to the enthusiastic welcome
+which greeted her appearance.
+
+A pause of expectancy followed. The boy held his breath and gazed
+spellbound at the radiant vision on whom all eyes were riveted.
+The orchestra struck the first notes of a plaintive melody, and
+the glorious voice of the great singer filled the vast hall, as
+the words of the sad little song of the child composer floated on
+the air. It was so simple, so touching, so full of exquisite
+pathos, that many were in tears before it was finished.
+
+And little Pierre? There he sat, scarcely daring to move or
+breathe, fearing that the flowers, the lights, the music, should
+vanish, and he should wake up to find it all a dream. He was
+aroused from his trance by the tremendous burst of applause that
+rang through the house as the last note trembled away into
+silence. He started up. It was no dream. The greatest singer in
+Europe had sung his little song before a fashionable London
+audience. Almost dazed with happiness, he never knew how he
+reached his poor home; and when he related the incidents of the
+evening, his mother's delight nearly equaled his own. Nor was this
+the end.
+
+Next day they were startled by a visit from Madame M---. After
+gently greeting the sick woman, while her hand played with
+Pierre's golden curls, she said: "Your little boy, Madame, has
+brought you a fortune. I was offered this morning, by the best
+publisher in London, 300 pounds for his little song; and after he
+has realized a certain amount from the sale, little Pierre here is
+to share the profits. Madame, thank God that your son has a gift
+from heaven." The grateful tears of the invalid and her visitor
+mingled, while the child knelt by his mother's bedside and prayed
+God to bless the kind lady who, in their time of sorrow and great
+need, had been to them as a savior.
+
+The boy never forgot his noble benefactress, and years afterward,
+when the great singer lay dying, the beloved friend who smoothed
+her pillow and cheered and brightened her last moments--the rich,
+popular, and talented composer--was no other than our little
+Pierre.
+
+
+
+
+
+"IF I REST, I RUST"
+
+    "The heights by great men reached and kept
+    Were not attained by sudden flight;
+    But they, while their companions slept,
+    Were toiling upward in the night."
+
+
+The significant inscription found on an old key,--"If I rest, I
+rust,"--would be an excellent motto for those who are afflicted
+with the slightest taint of idleness. Even the industrious might
+adopt it with advantage to serve as a reminder that, if one allows
+his faculties to rest, like the iron in the unused key, they will
+soon show signs of rust, and, ultimately, cannot do the work
+required of them.
+
+Those who would attain
+
+    "The heights by great men reached and kept"
+
+must keep their faculties burnished by constant use, so that they
+will unlock the doors of knowledge, the gates that guard the
+entrances to the professions, to science, art, literature,
+agriculture,--every department of human endeavor.
+
+Industry keeps bright the key that opens the treasury of
+achievement. If Hugh Miller, after toiling all day in a quarry,
+had devoted his evenings to rest and recreation, he would never
+have become a famous geologist. The celebrated mathematician,
+Edmund Stone, would never have published a mathematical
+dictionary, never have found the key to the science of
+mathematics, if he had given his spare moments, snatched from the
+duties of a gardener, to idleness. Had the little Scotch lad,
+Ferguson, allowed the busy brain to go to sleep while he tended
+sheep on the hillside, instead of calculating the position of the
+stars by the help of a string of beads, he would never have become
+a famous astronomer.
+
+"Labor vanquishes all,"--not in constant, spasmodic, or ill-
+directed labor, but faithful, unremitting, daily effort toward a
+well-directed purpose. Just as truly as eternal vigilance is the
+price of liberty, so is eternal industry the price of noble and
+enduring success.
+
+    "Seize, then, the minutes as they pass;
+       The woof of life is thought!
+    Warm up the colors; let them glow
+       With fire of fancy fraught."
+
+
+
+
+
+A BOY WHO KNEW NOT FEAR
+
+
+Richard Wagner, the great composer, weaves into one of his musical
+dramas a beautiful story about a youth named Siegfried, who did
+not know what fear was.
+
+The story is a sort of fairy tale or myth,--something which has a
+deep meaning hidden in it, but which is not literally true.
+
+We smile at the idea of a youth who never knew fear, who even as a
+little child had never been frightened by the imaginary terrors of
+night, the darkness of the forest, or the cries of the wild
+animals which inhabited it.
+
+Yet it is actually true that there was born at Burnham Thorpe,
+Norfolk, England, on September 29, 1758, a boy who never knew what
+fear was. This boy's name was Horatio Nelson,--a name which his
+fearlessness, ambition, and patriotism made immortal.
+
+Courage even to daring distinguished young Nelson from his boy
+companions. Many stories illustrating this quality are told of
+him.
+
+On one occasion, when the future hero of England was but a mere
+child, while staying at his grandmother's, he wandered away from
+the house in search of birds' nests. When dinner time came and
+went and the boy did not return, his family became alarmed. They
+feared that he had been kidnapped by gypsies, or that some other
+mishap had befallen him. A thorough search was made for him in
+every direction. Just as the searchers were about to give up their
+quest, the truant was discovered sitting quietly by the side of a
+brook which he was unable to cross.
+
+"I wonder, child," said his grandmother, "that hunger and fear did
+not drive you home."
+
+"Fear! grand-mamma," exclaimed the boy; "I never saw fear. What is
+it?"
+
+Horatio was a born leader, who never even in childhood shrank from
+a hazardous undertaking. This story of his school days shows how
+the spirit of leadership marked him before he had entered his
+teens.
+
+In the garden attached to the boarding school at North Walsham,
+which he and his elder brother, William, attended, there grew a
+remarkably fine pear tree. The sight of this tree, loaded with
+fruit was, naturally, a very tempting one to the boys. The boldest
+among the older ones, however, dared not risk the consequences of
+helping themselves to the pears, which they knew were highly
+prized by the master of the school.
+
+Horatio, who thought neither of the sin of stealing the
+schoolmaster's property, nor of the risk involved in the attempt,
+volunteered to secure the coveted pears.
+
+He was let down in sheets from the bedroom window by his
+schoolmates, and, after gathering as much of the fruit as he could
+carry, returned with considerable difficulty. He then turned the
+pears over to the boys, not keeping one for himself.
+
+"I only took them," he explained, "because the rest of you were
+afraid to venture."
+
+The sense of honor of the future "Hero of the Nile" and of
+Trafalgar was as keen in boyhood as in later life.
+
+One year, at the close of the Christmas holidays, he and his
+brother William set out on horseback to return to school. There
+had been a heavy fall of snow which made traveling very
+disagreeable, and William persuaded Horatio to go back home with
+him, saying that it was not safe to go on.
+
+"If that be the case," said Rev. Mr. Nelson, the father of the
+boys, when the matter was explained to him, "you certainly shall
+not go; but make another attempt, and I will leave it to your
+honor. If the road is dangerous, you may return; but remember,
+boys, I leave it to your honor."
+
+The snow was really deep enough to be made an excuse for not going
+on, and William was for returning home a second time. Horatio,
+however, would not be persuaded again. "We must go on," he said;
+"remember, brother, it was left to our honor."
+
+When only twelve years old, young Nelson's ambition urged him to
+try his fortune at sea. His uncle, Captain Maurice Suckling,
+commanded the Raisonnable, a ship of sixty-four guns, and the boy
+thought it would be good fortune, indeed, if he could get an
+opportunity to serve under him. "Do, William," he said to his
+brother, "write to my father, and tell him that I should like to
+go to sea with Uncle Maurice."
+
+On hearing of his son's wishes, Mr. Nelson at once wrote to
+Captain Suckling. The latter wrote back without delay: "What has
+poor Horatio done, who is so weak, that he, above all the rest,
+should be sent to rough it out at sea? But let him come, and the
+first time we go into action, a cannon ball may knock off his head
+and provide for him at once."
+
+This was not very encouraging for a delicate boy of twelve. But
+Horatio was not daunted. His father took him to London, and there
+put him into the stage coach for Chatham, where the Raisonnable
+was lying at anchor.
+
+He arrived at Chatham during the temporary absence of his uncle,
+so that there was no friendly voice to greet him when he went on
+board the big ship. Homesick and heartsick, he passed some of the
+most miserable days of his life on the Raisonnable. The officers
+treated the sailors with a harshness bordering on cruelty. This
+treatment, of course, increased the natural roughness of the
+sailors; and, altogether, the conditions were such that Horatio's
+opinion of the Royal Navy was sadly altered.
+
+But in spite of the separation from his brother William, who had
+been his schoolmate and constant companion, and all his other
+loved ones, the hardships he had to endure as a sailor boy among
+rough officers and rougher men, and his physical weakness, his
+courage did not fail him. He stuck bravely to his determination to
+be a sailor.
+
+Later, the lad went on a voyage to the West Indies, in a merchant
+ship commanded by Mr. John Rathbone. During this voyage, his
+anxiety to rise in his profession and his keen powers of
+observation, which were constantly exercised, combined to make him
+a practical sailor.
+
+After his return from the West Indies, his love of adventure was
+excited by the news that two ships--the Racehorse and the Carcass
+--were being fitted out for a voyage of discovery to the North
+Pole. Through the influence of Captain Suckling, he secured an
+appointment as coxswain, under Captain Lutwidge, who was second in
+command of the expedition.
+
+All went well with the Racehorse and the Carcass until they neared
+the Polar regions. Then they were becalmed, surrounded with ice,
+and wedged in so that they could not move.
+
+Young as Nelson was, he was put in command of one of the boats
+sent out to try to find a passage to the open water. While engaged
+in this work he was instrumental in saving the crew of another of
+the boats which had been attacked by walruses.
+
+His most notable adventure during this Polar cruise, however, was
+a fight with a bear.
+
+One night he stole away from his ship with a companion in pursuit
+of a bear. A fog which had been rising when they left the Carcass
+soon enveloped them. Between three and four o'clock in the
+morning, when the weather began to clear, they were sighted by
+Captain Lutwidge and his officers, at some distance from the ship,
+in conflict with a huge bear. The boys, who had been missed soon
+after they set out on their adventure, were at once signaled to
+return. Nelson's companion urged him to obey the signal, and,
+though their ammunition had given out, he longed to continue the
+fight.
+
+"Never mind," he cried excitedly; "do but let me get a blow at
+this fellow with the butt end of my musket, and we shall have
+him."
+
+Captain Lutwidge, seeing the boy's danger,--he being separated
+from the bear only by a narrow chasm in the ice,--fired a gun.
+This frightened the bear away. Nelson then returned to face the
+consequences of his disobedience.
+
+He was severely reprimanded by his captain for "conduct so
+unworthy of the office he filled." When asked what motive he had
+in hunting a bear, he replied, still trembling from the excitement
+of the encounter, "Sir, I wished to kill the bear that I might
+carry the skin to my father."
+
+The expedition finally worked its way out of the ice and sailed
+for home.
+
+Horatio's next voyage was to the East Indies, aboard the Seahorse,
+one of the vessels of a squadron under the command of Sir Edward
+Hughes. His attention to duty attracted the notice of his senior
+officer, on whose recommendation he was rated as a midshipman.
+
+After eighteen months in the trying climate of India, the youth's
+health gave way, and he was sent home in the Dolphin. His physical
+weakness affected his spirits. Gloom fastened upon him, and for a
+time he was very despondent about his future.
+
+"I felt impressed," he says, "with an idea that I should never
+rise in my profession. My mind was staggered with a view of the
+difficulties I had to surmount and the little interest I
+possessed. I could discover no means of reaching the object of my
+ambition. After a long and gloomy revery in which I almost wished
+myself overboard, a sudden flow of patriotism was kindled within
+me and presented my king and my country as my patrons. My mind
+exulted in the idea. 'Well, then,' I exclaimed, 'I will be a hero,
+and, confiding in Providence, I will brave every danger!'"
+
+In that hour Nelson leaped from boyhood to manhood. Thenceforth
+the purpose of his life never changed. From that time, as he often
+said afterward, "a radiant orb was suspended in his mind's eye,
+which urged him onward to renown."
+
+His health improved very much during the homeward voyage, and he
+was soon able to resume duty again.
+
+At nineteen he was made second lieutenant of the Lowestoffe; and
+at twenty he was commander of the Badger. Before he was twenty-
+one, owing largely to his courage and presence of mind in face of
+every danger, and his enthusiasm in his profession, "he had gained
+that mark," says his biographer, Southey, "which brought all the
+honors of the service within his reach."
+
+Pleasing in his address and conversation, always kind and
+thoughtful in his treatment of the men and boys under him, Nelson
+was the best-loved man in the British navy,--nay, in all England.
+
+When he was appointed to the command of the Boreas, a ship of
+twenty-eight guns, then bound for the Leeward Islands, he had
+thirty midshipmen under him. When any of them, at first, showed
+any timidity about going up the masts, he would say, by way of
+encouragement, "I am going a race to the masthead, and beg that I
+may meet you there." And again he would say cheerfully, that "any
+person was to be pitied who could fancy there was any danger, or
+even anything disagreeable, in the attempt."
+
+"Your Excellency must excuse me for bringing one of my midshipmen
+with me," he said to the governor of Barbados, who had invited him
+to dine. "I make it a rule to introduce them to all the good
+company I can, as they have few to look up to besides myself
+during the time they are at sea." Was it any wonder that his
+"middies" almost worshiped him?
+
+This thoughtfulness in small matters is always characteristic of
+truly great, large-souled men. Another distinguishing mark of
+Nelson's greatness was that he ruled by love rather than fear.
+
+When, at the age of forty-seven, he fell mortally wounded at the
+battle of Trafalgar, all England was plunged into grief. The
+crowning victory of his life had been won, but his country was
+inconsolable for the loss of the noblest of her naval heroes.
+
+"The greatest sea victory that the world had ever known was won,"
+says W. Clark Russell, "but at such a cost, that there was no man
+throughout the British fleet--there was no man indeed in all
+England--but would have welcomed defeat sooner than have paid the
+price of this wonderful conquest."
+
+The last words of the hero who had won some of the greatest of
+England's sea fights were, "Thank God, I have done my duty."
+
+
+
+
+
+HOW STANLEY FOUND LIVINGSTONE
+
+
+In the year 1866 David Livingstone, the great African explorer and
+missionary, started on his last journey to Africa. Three years
+passed away during which no word or sign from him had reached his
+friends. The whole civilized world became alarmed for his safety.
+It was feared that his interest in the savages in the interior of
+Africa had cost him his life.
+
+Newspapers and clergymen in many lands were clamoring for a relief
+expedition to be sent out in search of him. Royal societies,
+scientific associations, and the British government were debating
+what steps should be taken to find him. But they were very slow in
+coming to any conclusion, and while they were weighing questions
+and discussing measures, an energetic American settled the matter
+offhand.
+
+This was James Gordon Bennett, Jr., manager of the New York Herald
+and son of James Gordon Bennett, its editor and proprietor.
+
+Mr. Bennett was in a position which brought him into contact with
+some of the cleverest and most enterprising young men of his day.
+From all those he knew he singled out Henry M. Stanley for the
+difficult and perilous task of finding Livingstone.
+
+And who was this young man who was chosen to undertake a work
+which required the highest qualities of manhood to carry it to
+success?
+
+Henry M. Stanley, whose baptismal name was John Rowlands, was born
+of poor parents in Wales, in 1840. Being left an orphan at the age
+of three, he was sent to the poorhouse in his native place. There
+he remained for ten years, and then shipped as a cabin boy in a
+vessel bound for America. Soon after his arrival in this country,
+he found employment in New Orleans with a merchant named Stanley.
+His intelligence, energy, and ambition won him so much favor with
+this gentleman that he adopted him as his son and gave him his
+name.
+
+The elder Stanley died while Henry was still a youth. This threw
+him again upon his own resources, as he inherited nothing from his
+adopted father, who died without making a will. He next went to
+California to seek his fortune. He was not successful, however,
+and at twenty he was a soldier in the Civil War. When the war was
+over, he engaged himself as a correspondent to the New York
+Herald.
+
+In this capacity he traveled extensively in the East, doing
+brilliant work for his paper. When England went to war with King
+Theodore of Abyssinia, he accompanied the English army to
+Abyssinia, and from thence wrote vivid descriptive letters to the
+Herald. The child whose early advantages were only such as a Welsh
+poorhouse afforded, was already, through his own unaided efforts,
+a leader in his profession. He was soon to become a leader in a
+larger sense.
+
+At the time Mr. Bennett conceived the idea of sending an
+expedition in search of Livingstone, Stanley was in Spain. He had
+been sent there by the Herald to report the civil war then raging
+in that country. He thus describes the receipt of Mr. Bennett's
+message and the events immediately following:--
+
+"I am in Madrid, fresh from the carnage at Valencia. At 10 A.M.
+Jacopo, at No.--Calle de la Cruz, hands me a telegram; on opening
+it I find it reads, 'Come to Paris on important business.' The
+telegram is from James Gordon Bennett, Jr., the young manager of
+the New York Herald.
+
+"Down come my pictures from the walls of my apartments on the
+second floor; into my trunks go my books and souvenirs, my clothes
+are hastily collected, some half washed, some from the clothesline
+half dry, and after a couple of hours of hasty hard work my
+portmanteaus are strapped up and labeled for 'Paris.'"
+
+It was late at night when Stanley arrived in Paris. "I went
+straight to the 'Grand Hotel,'" he says, "and knocked at the door
+of Mr. Bennett's room.
+
+"'Come in,' I heard a voice say. Entering I found Mr. Bennett in
+bed.
+
+"'Who are you?' he asked.
+
+"'My name is Stanley,' I answered.
+
+"'Ah, yes! sit down; I have important business on hand for you.
+
+"'Where do you think Livingstone is?'
+
+"'I really do not know, sir.'
+
+"'Do you think he is alive?'
+
+"'He may be, and he may not be,' I answered.
+
+"'Well, I think he is alive, and that he can be found, and I am
+going to send you to find him.'
+
+"'What!' said I, 'do you really think I can find Dr. Livingstone?
+Do you mean me to go to Central Africa?'
+
+"'Yes, I mean that you shall go and find him wherever you may hear
+that he is ... . Of course you will act according to your own
+plans and do what you think best--BUT FIND LIVINGSTONE.'"
+
+The question of expense coming up, Mr. Bennett said: "Draw a
+thousand pounds now; and when you have gone through that, draw
+another thousand; and when that is spent, draw another thousand;
+and when you have finished that, draw another thousand, and so on;
+but, FIND LIVINGSTONE."
+
+Stanley asked no questions, awaited no further instructions. The
+two men parted with a hearty hand clasp. "Good night, and God be
+with you," said Bennett.
+
+"Good night, sir," returned Stanley. "What it is in the power of
+human nature to do I will do; and on such an errand as I go upon,
+God will be with me."
+
+The young man immediately began the work of preparation for his
+great undertaking. This in itself was a task requiring more than
+ordinary judgment and foresight, but Stanley was equal to the
+occasion.
+
+On January 6, 1871, he reached Zanzibar, an important native
+seaport on the east coast of Africa. Here the preparations for the
+journey were completed. Soon, with a train composed of one hundred
+and ninety men, twenty donkeys, and baggage amounting to about six
+tons, he started from this point for the interior of the
+continent.
+
+Then began a journey the dangers and tediousness of which can
+hardly be described. Stanley and his men were often obliged to
+wade through swamps filled with alligators. Crawling on hands and
+knees, they forced their way through miles of tangled jungle,
+breathing in as they went the sickening odor of decaying
+vegetables. They were obliged to be continually on their guard
+against elephants, lions, hyenas, and other wild inhabitants of
+the jungle. Fierce as these were, however, they were no more to be
+dreaded than the savage tribes whom they sometimes encountered.
+Whenever they stopped to rest, they were tormented by flies, white
+ants, and reptiles, which crawled all over them.
+
+For months they journeyed on under these conditions. The donkeys
+had died from drinking impure water, and some of the men had
+fallen victims to disease.
+
+It was no wonder that the survivors of the expedition--all but
+Stanley--had grown disheartened. Half starved, wasted by sickness
+and hardships of all kinds, with bleeding feet and torn clothes,
+some of them became mutinous. Stanley's skill as a leader was
+taxed to the utmost. Alternately coaxing the faint-hearted and
+punishing the insubordinate, he continued to lead them on almost
+in spite of themselves.
+
+So far they had heard nothing of Livingstone, nor had they any
+clew as to the direction in which they should go. There was no ray
+of light or hope to cheer them on their way, yet Stanley never for
+a moment thought of giving up the search.
+
+Once, amid the terrors of the jungle, surrounded by savages and
+wild animals, with supplies almost exhausted, and the remnant of
+his followers in a despairing condition, the young explorer came
+near being discouraged.
+
+But he would not give way to any feeling that might lessen his
+chances of success, and it was at this crisis he wrote in his
+journal:--
+
+"No living man shall stop me--only death can prevent me. But
+death--not even this; I shall not die--I will not die--I cannot
+die! Something tells me I shall find him and--write it larger--
+FIND HIM, FIND HIM! Even the words are inspiring."
+
+Soon after this a caravan passed and gave the expedition news
+which renewed hope: A white man, old, white haired, and sick, had
+just arrived at Ujiji.
+
+Stanley and his followers pushed on until they came in sight of
+Ujiji. Then the order was given to "unfurl the flags and load the
+guns." Immediately the Stars and Stripes and the flag of Zanzibar
+were thrown to the breeze, and the report of fifty guns awakened
+the echoes. The noise startled the inhabitants of Ujiji. They came
+running in the direction of the sounds, and soon the expedition
+was surrounded by a crowd of friendly black men, who cried loudly,
+"YAMBO, YAMBO, BANA!" which signifies welcome.
+
+"At this grand moment," says Stanley, "we do not think of the
+hundreds of miles we have marched, of the hundreds of hills that
+we have ascended and descended, of the many forests we have
+traversed, of the jungle and thickets that annoyed us, of the
+fervid salt plains that blistered our feet, of the hot suns that
+scorched us, nor the dangers and difficulties now happily
+surmounted.
+
+"At last the sublime hour has arrived!--our dreams, our hopes and
+anticipations are now about to be realized! Our hearts and our
+feelings are with our eyes, as we peer into the palms and try to
+make out in which hut or house lives the white man with the gray
+beard we heard about on the Malagarazi."
+
+When the uproar had ceased, a voice was heard saluting the leader
+of the expedition in English--"Good morning, sir."
+
+"Startled at hearing this greeting in the midst of such a crowd of
+black people," says Stanley, "I turn sharply round in search of
+the man, and see him at my side, with the blackest of faces, but
+animated and joyous--a man dressed in a long white shirt, with a
+turban of American sheeting around his head, and I ask, 'Who the
+mischief are you?'
+
+"'I am Susi, the servant of Dr. Livingstone,' said he, smiling,
+and showing a gleaming row of teeth.
+
+"'What! Is Dr. Livingstone here?'
+
+"'Yes, sir.'
+
+"'In this village?'
+
+"'Yes, sir.'
+
+"'Are you sure?'
+
+"'Sure, sure, sir. Why, I leave him just now.'
+
+"'Susi, run, and tell the Doctor I am coming.'"
+
+Susi ran like a madman to deliver the message. Stanley and his men
+followed more slowly. Soon they were gazing into the eyes of the
+man for news of whom the whole civilized world was waiting.
+
+"My heart beat fast," says Stanley, "but I must not let my face
+betray my emotions, lest it shall detract from the dignity of a
+white man appearing under such extraordinary circumstances."
+
+The young explorer longed to leap and shout for joy, but he
+controlled himself, and instead of embracing Livingstone as he
+would have liked to do, he grasped his hand, exclaiming, "I thank
+God, Doctor, that I have been permitted to see you."
+
+"I feel grateful that I am here to welcome you," was the gentle
+reply.
+
+All the dangers through which they had passed, all the privations
+they had endured were forgotten in the joy of this meeting. Doctor
+Livingstone's years of toil and suspense, during which he had
+heard nothing from the outside world; Stanley's awful experiences
+in the jungle, the fact that both men had almost exhausted their
+supplies; the terrors of open and hidden dangers from men and
+beasts, sickness, hope deferred, all were, for the moment, pushed
+out of mind. Later, each recounted his story to the other.
+
+After a period of rest, the two joined forces and together
+explored and made plans for the future. Stanley tried to induce
+Livingstone to return with him. But in vain; the great missionary
+explorer would not lay down his work. He persevered, literally
+until death.
+
+At last the hour of parting came. With the greatest reluctance
+Stanley gave his men the order, "Right about face." With a silent
+farewell, a grasp of the hands, and a look into each other's eyes
+which said more than words, the old man and the young man parted
+forever.
+
+Livingstone's life work was almost done. Stanley was the man on
+whose shoulders his mantle was to fall. The great work he had
+accomplished in finding Livingstone was the beginning of his
+career as an African explorer.
+
+After the death of Livingstone, Stanley determined to take up the
+explorer's unfinished work.
+
+In 1874 he left England at the head of an expedition fitted out by
+the London Daily Telegraph and the New York Herald, and penetrated
+into the very heart of Africa.
+
+He crossed the continent from shore to shore, overcoming on his
+march dangers and difficulties compared with which those
+encountered on his first journey sank into insignificance. He
+afterward gave an account of this expedition in his book entitled,
+"Darkest Africa."
+
+Stanley had successfully accomplished one of the great works of
+the world. He had opened the way for commerce and Christianity
+into the vast interior of Africa, which, prior to his discoveries,
+had been marked on the map by a blank space, signifying that it
+was an unexplored and unknown country.
+
+On his return the successful explorer found himself famous.
+Princes and scientific societies vied with one another in honoring
+him. King Edward VII of England, who was then Prince of Wales,
+sent him his personal congratulations; Humbert, the king of Italy,
+sent him his portrait; the khedive of Egypt decorated him with the
+grand commandership of the Order of the Medjidie; the Geographical
+Societies of London, Paris, Italy, and Marseilles sent him their
+gold medals; while in Berlin, Vienna, and many other large
+European cities, he was elected an honorary member of their most
+learned and most distinguished associations.
+
+What pleased the explorer most of all, though, was the honor paid
+him by America. "The government of the United States," he says,
+"has crowned my success with its official approval, and the
+unanimous vote of thanks passed in both houses of the legislature
+has made me proud for life of the expedition and its
+achievements."
+
+Honored to-day as the greatest explorer of his age, and esteemed
+alike for his scholarship and the immense services he has rendered
+mankind, Sir Henry Morton Stanley, the once friendless orphan lad
+whose only home was a Welsh poorhouse, may well be proud of the
+career he has carved out for himself.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE NESTOR OF AMERICAN JOURNALISTS
+
+
+"I heard that a neighbor three miles off, had borrowed from a
+still more distant neighbor, a book of great interest. I started
+off, barefoot, in the snow, to obtain the treasure. There were
+spots of bare ground, upon which I would stop to warm my feet. And
+there were also, along the road, occasional lengths of log fence
+from which the snow had melted, and upon which it was a luxury to
+walk. The book was at home, and the good people consented, upon my
+promise that it should be neither torn nor soiled, to lend it to
+me. In returning with the prize, I was too happy to think of the
+snow on my naked feet."
+
+This little incident, related by Thurlow Weed himself, is a sample
+of the means by which he gained that knowledge and power which
+made him not only the "Nestor of American Journalists," but
+rendered him famous in national affairs as the "American Warwick"
+or "The King Maker."
+
+There were no long happy years of schooling for this child of the
+"common people," whose father was a struggling teamster and
+farmer; no prelude of careless, laughing childhood before the
+stern duties of life began.
+
+Thurlow Weed was born at Catskill, Greene County, New York, in
+1797, a period in the history of our republic when there were very
+few educational opportunities for the children of the poor. "I
+cannot ascertain," he says, "how much schooling I got at Catskill,
+probably less than a year, certainly not a year and a half, and
+this was when I was not more than five or six years old."
+
+At an early age Thurlow learned to bend circumstances to his will
+and, ground by poverty, shut in by limitations as he was, even
+while contributing by his earning to the slender resources of the
+family, he gathered knowledge and pleasure where many would have
+found but thorns and bitterness.
+
+How simply he tells his story, as though his hardships and
+struggles were of no account, and how clearly the narrative
+mirrors the brave little fellow of ten!
+
+"My first employment," he says, "was in sugar making, an
+occupation to which I became much attached. I now look with great
+pleasure upon the days and nights passed in the sap-bush. The want
+of shoes (which, as the snow was deep, was no small privation) was
+the only drawback upon my happiness. I used, however, to tie
+pieces of an old rag carpet around my feet, and got along pretty
+well, chopping wood and gathering up sap."
+
+During this period he traveled, barefoot, to borrow books,
+wherever they could be found among the neighboring farmers. With
+his body in the sugar house, and his head thrust out of doors,
+"where the fat pine was blazing," the young enthusiast devoured
+with breathless interest a "History of the French Revolution," and
+the few other well-worn volumes which had been loaned him.
+
+Later, after he left the farm, we see the future journalist
+working successively as cabin boy and deck hand on a Hudson River
+steamboat, and cheerfully sending home the few dollars he earned.
+While employed in this capacity, he earned his first "quarter" in
+New York by carrying a trunk for one of the passengers from the
+boat to a hotel on Broad Street.
+
+But his boyish ambition was to be a journalist, and, after a year
+of seafaring life, he found his niche in the office of a small
+weekly newspaper, the Lynx, published at Onondaga Hollow, New
+York.
+
+So, at fourteen, owing to his indomitable will and perseverance,
+which conquered the most formidable obstacles, Thurlow Weed
+started on the career in which, despite the rugged road he still
+had to travel, he built up a noble character and won international
+fame.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN WITH AN IDEA
+
+
+It is February, 1492. A poor man, with gray hair, disheartened and
+dejected, is going out of the gate from the beautiful Alhambra, in
+Granada, on a mule. Ever since he was a boy, he has been haunted
+with the idea that the earth is round. He has believed that the
+pieces of carved wood, picked up four hundred miles at sea, and
+the bodies of two men, unlike any other human beings known, found
+on the shores of Portugal, have drifted from unknown lands in the
+west. But his last hope of obtaining aid for a voyage of discovery
+has failed. King John of Portugal, under pretense of helping him,
+has secretly sent out an expedition of his own. His friends have
+abandoned him; he has begged bread; has drawn maps to keep him
+from starving, and lost his wife; his friends have called him
+crazy, and have forsaken him. The council of wise men, called by
+Ferdinand and Isabella, ridicule his theory of reaching the east
+by sailing west. "But the sun and moon are round," replies
+Columbus, "why not the earth?" "If the earth is a ball, what holds
+it up?" the wise men ask. "What holds the sun and moon up?"
+Columbus replies.
+
+A learned doctor asks, "How can men walk with their heads hanging
+down, and their feet up, like flies on a ceiling?" "How can trees
+grow with their roots in the air?" "The water would run out of the
+ponds, and we should fall off," says another. "The doctrine is
+contrary to the Bible, which says, 'The heavens are stretched out
+like a tent.'" "Of course it is flat; it is rank heresy to say it
+is round."
+
+He has waited seven long years. He has had his last interview,
+hoping to get assistance from Ferdinand and Isabella after they
+drive the Moors out of Spain. Isabella was almost persuaded, but
+finally refused. He is now old, his last hope has fled; the
+ambition of his life has failed. He hears a voice calling him. He
+looks back and sees an old friend pursuing him on a horse, and
+beckoning him to come back. He saw Columbus turn away from the
+Alhambra, disheartened, and he hastens to the queen and tells her
+what a great thing it would be, at a trifling expense, if what the
+sailor believes should prove true. "It shall be done," Isabella
+replies. "I will pledge my jewels to raise the money; call him
+back." Columbus turns back, and with him turns the world.
+
+Three frail vessels, little larger than fishing boats, the Santa
+Maria, the Pinta, and the Nina, set sail from Palos, August 3,
+1492, for an unknown land, upon untried seas; the sailors would
+not volunteer, but were forced to go by the king. Friends
+ridiculed them for following a crazy man to certain destruction,
+for they believed the sea beyond the Canaries was boiling hot.
+"What if the earth is round?" they said, "and you sail down the
+other side, how can you get back again? Can ships sail up hill?"
+
+Only three days out, the Pinto's signal of distress is flying; she
+has broken her rudder. September 8 they discover a broken mast
+covered with seaweed floating in the sea. Terror seizes the
+sailors, but Columbus calms their fears with pictures of gold and
+precious stones of India. September 13, two hundred miles west of
+the Canaries, Columbus is horrified to find that the compass, his
+only guide, is failing him, and no longer points to the north
+star. No one had yet dreamed that the earth turns on its axis. The
+sailors are ready for mutiny, but Columbus tells them the north
+star is not exactly in the north. October 1 they are two thousand
+three hundred miles from land, though Columbus tells the sailors
+one thousand seven hundred. Columbus discovers a bush in the sea,
+with berries on it, and soon they see birds and a piece of carved
+wood. At sunset, the crew kneel upon the deck and chant the vesper
+hymn. It is sixty-seven days since they left Palos, and they have
+sailed nearly three thousand miles, only changing their course
+once. At ten o'clock at night they see a light ahead, but it
+vanishes. Two o'clock in the morning, October 12, Roderigo de
+Friana, on watch at the masthead of the Pinta, shouts, "Land!
+land! land!" The sailors are wild with joy, and throw themselves
+on their knees before Columbus, and ask forgiveness. They reach
+the shore, and the hero of the world's greatest expedition unfolds
+the flag of Spain and takes possession of the new world. Perhaps
+no greater honor was ever paid man than Columbus received on his
+return to Ferdinand and Isabella. Yet, after his second visit to
+the land he discovered, he was taken back to Spain in chains, and
+finally died in poverty and neglect; while a pickle dealer of
+Seville, who had never risen above second mate, on a fishing
+vessel, Amerigo Vespucci, gave his name to the new world.
+Amerigo's name was put on an old chart or sketch to indicate the
+point of land where he landed, five years after Columbus
+discovered the country, and this crept into print by accident.
+
+
+
+
+
+"BERNARD OF THE TUILERIES"
+
+
+Opposite the entrance to the Sevres Museum in the old town of
+Sevres, in France, stands a handsome bronze statue of Bernard
+Palissy, the potter. Within the museum are some exquisite pieces
+of pottery known as "Palissy ware." They are specimens of the art
+of Palissy, who spent the best years of his life toiling to
+discover the mode of making white enamel.
+
+The story of his trials and sufferings in seeking to learn the
+secret, and of his final triumph over all difficulties, is an
+inspiring one.
+
+Born in the south of France, as far back as the year 1509, Bernard
+Palissy did not differ much from an intelligent, high-spirited
+American boy of the twentieth century. His parents were poor, and
+he had few of the advantages within the reach of the humblest
+child in the United States to-day. In spite of poverty, he as
+cheerful, light hearted, and happy in his great love for nature,
+which distinguished him all through life. The forest was his
+playground, his companions the birds, insects, and other living
+things that made their home there.
+
+From the first, Nature was his chief teacher. It was from her, and
+her alone, he learned the lessons that in after years made him
+famous both as a potter and a scientist. The habit of observation
+seemed natural to him, for without suggestions from books or older
+heads, his eyes and ears noticed all that the nature student of
+our day is drilled into observing.
+
+The free, outdoor life of the forest helped to give the boy the
+strength of mind and body which afterward enabled him, in spite of
+the most discouraging conditions, to pursue his ideal. He was
+taught how to read and write, and from his father learned how to
+paint on glass. From him he also learned the names and some of the
+properties of the minerals employed in painting glass. All the
+knowledge that in after years made him an artist, a scientist, and
+a writer, was the result of his unaided study of nature. To books
+he was indebted for only the smallest part of what he knew.
+
+Happy and hopeful, sunshiny of face and disposition, Bernard grew
+from childhood to youth. Then, when he was about eighteen, there
+came into his heart a longing to try his fortune in the great
+world which lay beyond his forest home. Like most country-bred
+boys of his age, he felt that he had grown too large for the
+parent nest and must try his wings elsewhere. In his case there
+was, indeed, little to induce an ambitious boy to stay at home.
+The trade of glass painting, which in previous years had been a
+profitable one, had at that time fallen somewhat out of favor, and
+there was not enough work to keep father and son busy.
+
+When he shouldered his scanty wallet and bade farewell to father
+and mother, and the few friends and neighbors he knew in the
+straggling forest hamlet, Bernard Palissy closed the first chapter
+of his life. The second was a long period of travel and self-
+education.
+
+He wandered through the forest of Ardennes, making observations
+and collecting specimens of minerals, plants, reptiles, and
+insects. He spent some years in the upper Pyrenees, at Tarbes.
+From Antwerp in the east he bent his steps to Brest, in the most
+westerly part of Brittany, and from Montpellier to Nismes he
+traveled across France. During his wanderings he supported himself
+by painting on glass, portrait painting (which he practiced after
+a fashion), surveying, and planning sites for houses and gardens.
+In copying or inventing patterns for painted windows, he had
+acquired a knowledge of geometry and considerable skill in the use
+of a rule and compass. His love of knowledge for its own sake made
+him follow up the study of geometry, as far as he could pursue it,
+and hence his skill as a surveyor.
+
+At this time young Palissy had no other object in life than to
+learn. His eager, inquiring mind was ever on the alert. Wherever
+his travels led him, he sought information of men and nature,
+always finding the latter his chief instructor. He painted and
+planned that he might live to probe her secrets. But the time was
+fast approaching when a new interest should come into his life and
+overshadow all others.
+
+After ten or twelve years of travel, he married and settled in
+Saintes where he pursued, as his services were required, the work
+of glass painter and surveyor. Before long he grew dissatisfied
+with the dull routine of his daily life. He felt that he ought to
+do more than make a living for his wife and children. There were
+two babies now to be cared for as well as his wife, and he could
+not shoulder his wallet, as in the careless days of his boyhood,
+and wander away in search of knowledge or fortune.
+
+About this time an event happened which changed his whole life. He
+was shown a beautiful cup of Italian manufacture. I give in his
+own words a description of the cup, and the effect the sight of it
+had on him. "An earthen cup," he says, "turned and enameled with
+so much beauty, that from that time I entered into controversy
+with my own thoughts, recalling to mind several suggestions that
+some people had made to me in fun, when I was painting portraits.
+Then, seeing that these were falling out of request in the country
+where I dwelt, and that glass painting was also little patronized,
+I began to think that if I should discover how to make enamels, I
+could make earthen vessels and other things very prettily, because
+God has gifted me with some knowledge of drawing."
+
+His ambition was fired at once. A definite purpose formed itself
+in his mind. He knew nothing whatever of pottery. No man in France
+knew the secret of enameling, which made the Italian cup so
+beautiful, and Palissy had not the means to go to Italy, where he
+probably could have learned it. He resolved to study the nature
+and properties of clays, and not to rest until he had discovered
+the secret of the white enamel. Delightful visions filled his
+imagination. He thought within himself that he would become the
+prince of potters, and would provide his wife and children with
+all the luxuries that money could buy. "Thereafter," he wrote,
+"regardless of the fact that I had no knowledge of clays, I began
+to seek for the enamels as a man gropes in the dark."
+
+Palissy was a young man when he began his search for the enamel;
+he was past middle life when his labors were finally rewarded.
+Groping like a man in the dark, as he himself said, he
+experimented for years with clays and chemicals, but with small
+success. He built with his own hands a furnace at the back of his
+little cottage in which to carry on his experiments. At first his
+enthusiasm inspired his wife and neighbors with the belief that he
+would succeed in his efforts. But time went on, and as one
+experiment after another failed or was only partially successful,
+one and all lost faith in him. He had no friend or helper to buoy
+him up under his many disappointments. Even his wife reproached
+him for neglecting his regular work and reducing herself and her
+children to poverty and want, while he wasted his time and
+strength in chasing a dream. His neighbors jeered at him as a
+madman, one who put his plain duty aside for the gratification of
+what seemed to their dull minds merely a whim. His poor wife could
+hardly be blamed for reproaching him. She could neither understand
+nor sympathize with his hopes and fears, while she knew that if he
+followed his trade, he could at least save his family from want.
+It was a trying time for both of them. But who ever heard tell of
+an artist, inventor, discoverer, or genius of any kind being
+deterred by poverty, abuse, ridicule, or obstacles of any kind
+from the pursuit of an ideal!
+
+After many painful efforts, the poor glass painter had succeeded
+in producing a substance which he believed to be white enamel. He
+spread it on a number of earthenware pots which he had made, and
+placed them in his furnace. The extremities to which he was
+reduced to supply heat to the furnace are set forth in his own
+words: "Having," he says, "covered the new pieces with the said
+enamel, I put them into the furnace, still keeping the fire at its
+height; but thereupon occurred to me a new misfortune which caused
+great mortification, namely, that the wood having failed me, I was
+forced to burn the palings which maintained the boundaries of my
+garden; which being burnt also, I was forced to burn the tables
+and the flooring of my house, to cause the melting of the second
+composition. I suffered an anguish that I cannot speak, for I was
+quite exhausted and dried up by the heat of the furnace. Further,
+to console me, I was the object of mockery; and even those from
+whom solace was due ran crying through the town that I was burning
+my floors, and in this way my credit was taken from me, and I was
+regarded as a madman.
+
+"Others said that I was laboring to make false money, which was a
+scandal under which I pined away, and slipped with bowed head
+through the streets like a man put to shame. No one gave me
+consolation, but, on the contrary, men jested at me, saying, 'It
+was right for him to die of hunger, seeing that he had left off
+following his trade!' All these things assailed my ears when I
+passed through the street; but for all that, there still remained
+some hope which encouraged and sustained me, inasmuch as the last
+trials had turned out tolerably well; and thereafter I thought
+that I knew enough to get my own living, although I was far enough
+from that (as you shall hear afterward)."
+
+This latest experiment filled him with joy, for he had at last
+discovered the secret of the enamel. But there was yet much to be
+learned, and several years more of extreme poverty and suffering
+had to be endured before his labors were rewarded with complete
+success. But it came at last in overflowing measure, as it almost
+invariably does to those who are willing to work and suffer
+privation and persevere to the end.
+
+His work as a potter brought Palissy fame and riches. At the
+invitation of Catherine de' Medici, wife of King Henry II of
+France, he removed to Paris. He established a workshop in the
+vicinity of the royal Palace of the Tuileries, and was thereafter
+known as "Bernard of the Tuileries." He was employed by the king
+and queen and some of the greatest nobles of France to embellish
+their palaces and gardens with the products of his beautiful art.
+
+Notwithstanding his lack of schooling, Bernard Palissy was one of
+the most learned men of his day. He founded a Museum of Natural
+History, wrote valuable books on natural science, and for several
+years delivered lectures on the same subject. His lectures were
+attended by the most advanced scholars of Paris, who were
+astonished at the extent and accuracy of his knowledge of nature.
+But he was as modest as he was wise and good, and when people
+wondered at his learning, he would reply with the most unaffected
+simplicity, "I have had no other book than the sky and the earth,
+known to all."
+
+No more touching story of success, in spite of great difficulties,
+than Bernard Palissy's has been written. It is bad to think that
+after the terrible trials which he endured for the sake of his
+art, his last years also should have been clouded by misfortune.
+During the civil war which raged in France between the Huguenots
+and the Catholics, he was, on account of his religious views,
+imprisoned in the Bastile, where he died in 1589, at the age of
+eighty.
+
+
+
+
+
+HOW THE "LEARNED BLACKSMITH" FOUND TIME
+
+
+"The loss of an hour," says the philosopher, Leibnitz, "is the
+loss of a part of life." This is a truth that has been appreciated
+by most men who have risen to distinction,--who have been world
+benefactors. The lives of those great moral heroes put to shame
+the laggard youth of to-day, who so often grumbles: "I have no
+time. If I didn't have to work all day, I could accomplish
+something. I could read and educate myself. But if a fellow has to
+grub away ten or twelve hours out of the twenty-four, what time is
+left to do anything for one's self?"
+
+How much spare time had Elihu Burritt, "the youngest of many
+brethren," as he himself quaintly puts it, born in a humble home
+in New Britain, Connecticut, reared amid toil and poverty? Yet,
+during his father's long illness, and after his death, when Elihu
+was but a lad in his teens, with the family partially dependent
+upon the work of his hands, he found time,--if only a few
+moments,--at the end of a fourteen-hour day of labor, for his
+books.
+
+While working at his trade as a blacksmith, he solved problems in
+arithmetic and algebra while his irons were heating. Over the
+forge also appeared a Latin grammar and a Greek lexicon; and,
+while with sturdy blows the ambitious youth of sixteen shaped the
+iron on the anvil, he fixed in his mind conjugations and
+declensions.
+
+How did this man, born nearly a century ago, possessing none of
+the advantages within reach of the poorest and humblest boy of to-
+day, become one of the brightest ornaments in the world of
+letters, a leader in the reform movements of his generation?
+
+Apparently no more talented than his nine brothers and sisters, by
+improving every opportunity he could wring from a youth of
+unremitting toil, his love for knowledge grew with what it fed
+upon, and carried him to undreamed-of heights. In palaces and
+council halls, the words of the "Learned Blacksmith" were listened
+to with the closest attention and deference.
+
+Read the life of Elihu Burritt, and you will be ashamed to grumble
+that you have no time--no chance for self-improvement.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LEGEND OF WILLIAM TELL
+
+
+"Ye crags and peaks, I'm with you once again! I hold to you the
+hands you first beheld, to show they still are free. Methinks I
+hear a spirit in your echoes answer me, and bid your tenant
+welcome to his home again! O sacred forms, how proud you look! how
+high you lift your heads into the sky! how huge you are, how
+mighty, and how free! Ye are the things that tower, that shine;
+whose smile makes glad--whose frown is terrible; whose forms,
+robed or unrobed, do all the impress wear of awe divine. Ye guards
+of liberty, I'm with you once again! I call to you with all my
+voice! I hold my hands to you to show they still are free. I rush
+to you as though I could embrace you!"
+
+What schoolboy or schoolgirl is not familiar with those stirring
+lines from "William Tell's Address to His Native Mountains," by J.
+M. Knowles? And the story of William Tell,--is it not dear to
+every heart that loves liberty? Though modern history declares it
+to be purely mythical, its popularity remains unaffected. It will
+live forever in the traditions of Switzerland, dear to the hearts
+of her people as their native mountains, and even more full of
+interest to the stranger than authentic history.
+
+"His image [Tell's]," says Lamartine, "with those of his wife and
+children, are inseparably connected with the majestic, rural, and
+smiling landscapes of Helvetia, the modern Arcadia of Europe. As
+often as the traveler visits these peculiar regions; as often as
+the unconquered summits of Mont Blanc, St. Gothard, and the Rigi,
+present themselves to his eyes in the vast firmament as the ever-
+enduring symbols of liberty; whenever the lake of the Four Cantons
+presents a vessel wavering on the blue surface of its waters;
+whenever the cascade bursts in thunder from the heights of the
+Splugen, and shivers itself upon the rocks like tyranny against
+free hearts; whenever the ruins of an Austrian fortress darken
+with the remains of frowning walls the round eminences of Uri or
+Claris; and whenever a calm sunbeam gilds on the declivity of a
+village the green velvet of the meadows where the herds are
+feeding to the tinkling of bells and the echo of the Ranz des
+Vaches--so often the imagination traces in all these varied scenes
+the hat on the summit of the pole--the archer condemned to aim at
+the apple placed on the head of his own child--the mark hurled to
+the ground, transfixed by the unerring arrow--the father chained
+to the bottom of the boat, subduing night, the storm, and his own
+indignation, to save his executioner--and finally, the outraged
+husband, threatened with the loss of all he holds most dear,
+yielding to the impulse of nature, and in his turn striking the
+murderer with a deathblow."
+
+The story which tradition hands down as the origin of the freedom
+of Switzerland dates back to the beginning of the fourteenth
+century. At that time Switzerland was under the sovereignty of the
+emperor of Germany, who ruled over Central Europe. Count Rudolph
+of Hapsburg, a Swiss by birth, who had been elected to the
+imperial throne in 1273, made some efforts to save his countrymen
+from the oppression of a foreign yoke. His son, Albert, Archduke
+of Austria, who succeeded him in 1298, inherited none of his
+sympathies for Switzerland. On his accession to the throne Albert
+resolved to curtail the liberties still enjoyed by the inhabitants
+of some of the cantons, and to bend the whole of the Swiss people
+to his will.
+
+The mountaineers of the cantons of Schwytz, Uri, and Unterwalden
+recognized no authority but that of the emperor; while the
+peasants of the neighboring valleys were at the mercy of local
+tyrants--the great nobles and their allies.
+
+In order to carry out his project of subjecting all to the same
+yoke, Albert of Austria appointed governors to rule over the semi-
+free provinces or cantons. These governors, who bore the official
+title of Bailiffs of the Emperor, exercised absolute authority
+over the people. Men, women, and children were at their mercy, and
+were treated as mere chattels--the property of their rulers.
+Insult and outrage were heaped upon them until their lives became
+almost unendurable.
+
+An instance of the manner in which these petty tyrants used their
+authority is related of the bailiff Landenberg, who ruled over
+Unterwalden.
+
+For some trumped-up offense of which a young peasant, named Arnold
+of Melcthal, was accused, his oxen were confiscated by Landenberg.
+The deputy sent to seize the animals, which Landenberg really
+coveted for his own, said sneeringly to Arnold, "If peasants wish
+for bread, they must draw the plow themselves." Roused to fury by
+this taunt, Arnold attempted to resist the seizure of his
+property, and in so doing broke an arm of one of the deputy's men.
+He then fled to the mountains; but he could not hide himself from
+the vengeance of Landenberg. The peasant's aged father was
+arrested by order of the bailiff, and his eyes put out in
+punishment for his son's offense. "That puncture," says an old
+chronicler, "went so deep into many a heart that numbers resolved
+to die rather than leave it unrequited."
+
+But the crudest and most vindictive of the Austrian or German
+bailiffs, as they were interchangeably called, was one Hermann
+Gessler. He had built himself a fortress, which he called "Uri's
+Restraint," and there he felt secure from all attacks.
+
+This man was the terror of the whole district. His name was a
+synonym for all that was base, brutal, and tyrannical. Neither the
+property, the lives, nor the honor of the people were respected by
+him. His hatred and contempt for the peasants were so great that
+the least semblance of prosperity among them aroused his ire.
+
+One day while riding with an armed escort through the canton of
+Schwytz, he noticed a comfortable-looking dwelling which was being
+built by one Werner Stauffacher. Turning to his followers, he
+cried, "Is it not shameful that miserable serfs like these should
+be permitted to build such houses when huts would be too good for
+them?" "Let this be finished," said his chief attendant; "we shall
+then sculpture over the gate the arms of the emperor, and a little
+time will show whether the builder has the audacity to dispute
+possession with us." The answer pleased Gessler, who replied,
+"Thou art right," and, planning future vengeance, he passed on
+with his escort.
+
+The wife of Stauffacher, who had been standing near the new
+building, but concealed from Gessler and his men, heard the
+conversation, and reported it to her husband. The latter, filled
+with indignation, without uttering a word, arose and started for
+the home of his father-in-law, Walter Furst, in the village of
+Attinghaussen.
+
+On his arrival Staffaucher was cordially welcomed by his father-
+in-law, who placed refreshments before him, and waited for him to
+explain the object of his visit. Pushing aside the food, he said,
+"I have made a vow never again to taste wine or swallow meat until
+we cease to be slaves." Stauffacher then related what had
+happened. Furst's anger was kindled by the recital. Both men were
+roused to such a pitch that they resolved, then and there, to free
+themselves and their countrymen from the chains which bound them,
+or die in the attempt. They conversed far into the night, making
+plans for the gaining of national independence. Then they sought
+out in his hiding-place Arnold of Melchthal, the young peasant
+whom Landenberg had so cruelly persecuted. In him they found, as
+they expected, an ardent supporter of their plans.
+
+The three conspirators, Stauffacher, Furst, and Melchthal,
+represented different cantons; one belonging to Schwytz, another
+to Uri, and the third to Unterwalden. They hoped to form a league
+and unite the three cantons against the power of Austria. In
+pursuance of their plans, each pledged himself to select from
+among the most persecuted and the most daring in their respective
+cantons ten others to join them in the cause of liberty.
+
+On the night of November 7, or 17 (the date is variously given),
+in the year 1307, the confederates met together in a secluded
+mountain spot called Rutli. There they bound themselves by an
+oath, the terms of which embodied their purpose: "We swear in the
+presence of God, before whom kings and people are equal, to live
+or die for our fellow-countrymen; to undertake and sustain all in
+common; neither to suffer injustice nor to commit injury; to
+respect the rights and property of the Count of Hapsburg; to do no
+violence to the imperial bailiffs, but to put an end to their
+tyranny." They fixed upon January 1, 1308, as the day for a
+general uprising.
+
+Events were gradually shaping themselves for the appearance of
+William Tell on the scene. Up to this time his name does not
+appear in the annals of his country. The bold peasant of Uri was
+so little prominent among his countrymen that, according to some
+versions of the legend, although a son-in-law of Walter Furst, he
+had not been chosen among the thirty conspirators summoned to the
+meeting at Rutli. This, however, is contradicted by another, which
+asserts that he was "one of the oath-bound men of Rutli."
+
+The various divergences in the different versions of the legend do
+not affect its main features, on which all the chroniclers are
+agreed. It was the crowning insult to his country which
+indisputably brought Tell into prominence and made his name
+forever famous.
+
+Gessler's hatred of the people daily increased, and was constantly
+showing itself in every form of petty tyranny that a mean and
+wicked nature could devise. He noticed the growing discontent
+among the peasantry, but instead of trying to allay it, he
+determined to humiliate them still more. For this purpose he had a
+pole, surmounted by the ducal cap of Austria, erected in the
+market square of the village of Altdorf, and issued a command that
+all who passed it should bow before the symbol of imperial rule.
+Guards were placed by the pole with orders to make prisoners of
+all who refused to pay homage to the ducal cap.
+
+William Tell, a bold hunter and skillful boatman of Uri, passing
+by one day, with his little son, Walter, refused to bend his knee
+before the symbol of foreign oppression. He was seized at once by
+the guards and carried before the bailiff.
+
+There is considerable contradiction at this point as to whether
+Tell was at once carried before the bailiff or bound to the pole,
+where he remained, guarded by the soldiers, until the bailiff,
+returning the same day from a hunting expedition, appeared upon
+the scene. Schiller, in his drama of "William Tell," adopts the
+latter version of the story.
+
+According to the drama, Tell is represented as being bound to the
+pole. In a short time he is surrounded by friends and neighbors.
+Among them are his father-in-law, Walter Furst, Werner
+Stauffacher, and Arnold of Melchthal. They advance to rescue the
+prisoner. The guards cry in a loud voice: "Revolt! Rebellion!
+Treason! Sedition! Help! Protect the agents of the law!"
+
+Gessler and his party hear the cries, and rush to the support of
+the guards. Gessler cries in a loud authoritative voice:
+"Wherefore is this assembly of people? Who called for help? What
+does all this mean? I demand to know the cause of this!"
+
+Then, addressing himself particularly to one of the guards and
+pointing to Tell, he says: "Stand forward! Who art thou, and why
+dost thou hold that man a prisoner?"
+
+"Most mighty lord," replies the guard, "I am one of your soldiers
+placed here as a sentinel over that hat. I seized this man in the
+act of disobedience, for refusing to salute it. I was about to
+carry him to prison in compliance with your orders, and the
+populace were preparing to rescue him by force."
+
+After questioning Tell, whose answers are not satisfactory, the
+bailiff pronounces sentence upon him. The sentence is that he
+shall shoot at an apple placed on the head of his little son,
+Walter, and if he fails to hit the mark he shall die.
+
+"My lord," cries the agonized parent; "what horrible command is
+this you lay upon me? What! aim at a mark placed on the head of my
+dear child? No, no, it is impossible that such a thought could
+enter your imagination. In the name of the God of mercy, you
+cannot seriously impose that trial on a father."
+
+"Thou shalt aim at an apple placed on the head of thy son. I will
+and I command it," repeats the tyrant.
+
+"I! William Tell! aim with my own crossbow at the head of my own
+offspring! I would rather die a thousand deaths."
+
+"Thou shall shoot, or assuredly thou diest with thy son!"
+
+"Become the murderer of my child! My lord, you have no son--you
+cannot have the feelings of a father's heart!"
+
+Gessler's friends interfere in behalf of the unhappy father, and
+plead for mercy. But all appeal is in vain. The tyrant is
+determined on carrying out his sentence.
+
+The father and son are placed at a distance of eighty paces apart.
+An apple is placed on the boy's head, and the father is commanded
+to hit the mark. He hesitates and trembles.
+
+"Why dost thou hesitate?" questions his persecutor. "Thou hast
+deserved death, and I could compel thee to undergo the punishment;
+but in my clemency I place thy fate in thy own skillful hands. He
+who is the master of his destiny cannot complain that his sentence
+is a severe one. Thou art proud of thy steady eye and unerring
+aim; now, hunter, is the moment to prove thy skill. The object is
+worthy of thee--the prize is worth contending for. To strike the
+center of a target is an ordinary achievement; but the true master
+of his art is he who is always certain, and whose heart, hand, and
+eye are firm and steady under every trial."
+
+At length Tell nerves himself for the ordeal, raises his bow, and
+takes aim at the target on his son's head. Before firing, however,
+he concealed a second arrow under his vest. His movement did not
+escape Gessler's notice.
+
+The marksman fires. The apple falls from his boy's head, cleft in
+twain by the arrow.
+
+Even Gessler is loud in his admiration of Tell's skill. "By
+heaven," he cries, "he has clove the apple exactly in the center.
+Let us do justice; it is indeed a masterpiece of skill."
+
+Tell's friends congratulate him. He is about to set out for his
+home with the child who has been saved to him from the very jaws
+of death as it were. But Gessler stays him.
+
+"Thou hast concealed a second arrow in thy bosom," he says,
+sternly addressing Tell. "What didst thou intend to do with it?"
+Tell replies that such is the custom of all hunters.
+
+Gessler is not satisfied and urges him to confess his real motive.
+"Speak truly and frankly," he says; "say what thou wilt, I promise
+thee thy life. To what purpose didst thou destine the second
+arrow?"
+
+Tell can no longer restrain his indignation, and, fixing his eyes
+steadily on Gessler, he answers "Well then, my lord, since you
+assure my life, I will speak the truth without reserve. If I had
+struck my beloved child, with the second arrow I would have
+transpierced thy heart. Assuredly that time I should not have
+missed my mark."
+
+"Villain!" exclaims Gessler, "I have promised thee life upon my
+knightly word; I will keep my pledge. But since I know thee now,
+and thy rebellious heart, I will remove thee to a place where thou
+shalt never more behold the light of sun or moon. Thus only shall
+I be sheltered from thy arrows."
+
+He orders the guards to seize and bind Tell, saying, "I will
+myself at once conduct him to Kussnacht."
+
+The fortress of Kussnacht was situated on the summit of Mount Rigi
+between Lake Lucerne, or the Lake of the Four Cantons as it is
+sometimes called, and Lake Zug. It was reached by crossing Lake
+Lucerne.
+
+The prisoner was placed bound in the bottom of a boat, and with
+his guards, the rowers, an inexperienced pilot, and Gessler in
+command, the boat was headed for Kussnacht.
+
+When about halfway across the lake a sudden and violent storm
+overwhelmed the party. They were in peril of their lives. The
+rowers and pilot were panic-stricken, and powerless in face of the
+danger that threatened them.
+
+Tell's fame as a boatman was as widespread as that of his skill as
+an archer. The rowers cried aloud in their terror that he was the
+only man in Switzerland that could save them from death. Gessler
+immediately commanded him to be released from his bonds and given
+the helm.
+
+Tell succeeded in guiding the vessel to the shore. Then seizing
+his bow and arrows, which his captors had thrown beside him, he
+sprang ashore at a point known as "Tell's Leap." The boat,
+rebounding, after he leaped from it was again driven out on the
+lake before any of the remainder of its occupants could effect a
+landing. After a time, however, the fury of the storm abated, and
+they reached the shore in safety.
+
+In the meantime Tell had concealed himself in a defile in the
+mountain through which Gessler would have to pass on his way to
+Kussnacht. There he lay in wait for his persecutor who followed in
+hot pursuit.
+
+Vowing vengeance as he went, Gessler declared that if the fugitive
+did not give himself up to justice, every day that passed by
+should cost him the life of his wife or one of his children. While
+the tyrant was yet speaking, an arrow shot by an unerring hand
+pierced his heart. Tell had taken vengeance into his own hands.
+
+The death of Gessler was the signal for a general uprising. The
+oath-bound men of Rutli saw that this was their great opportunity.
+They called to their countrymen to follow them to freedom or
+death.
+
+Gessler's crowning act of tyranny--his inhuman punishment of Tell
+--had roused the spirit of rebellion in the hearts of even the
+meekest and most submissive of the peasants. Gladly, then, did
+they respond to the call of the leaders of the insurrection.
+
+The legend says that on New Year's Eve, 1308, Stauffacher, with a
+chosen band of followers, climbed the mountain which led to
+Landenberg's fortress castle of Rotzberg. There they were assisted
+by an inmate of the castle, a young girl whose lover was among the
+rebels. She threw a rope out of one of the windows of the castle,
+and by it her countrymen climbed one after another into the
+castle. They seized the bailiff, Landenberg, and confined him in
+one of the dungeons of his own castle. Next day the conspirators
+were reinforced by another party who gained entrance to the castle
+by means of a clever ruse. Landenberg and his men were given their
+freedom by the peasants on condition that they would quit
+Switzerland forever.
+
+The castle of Uri was attacked and taken possession of by Walter
+Furst and William Tell, while other strongholds were captured by
+Arnold of Melchthal and his associates.
+
+Bonfires blazed all over the country. The dawn of Switzerland's
+freedom had appeared. The reign of tyranny was doomed. William
+Tell was the hero of the hour, and ever since his name has been
+enshrined in the hearts of his countrymen as the watchword of
+their liberties. Even to this day, as history tells us, the Swiss
+peasant cherishes the belief that "Tell and the three men of Rutli
+are asleep in the mountains, but will awake to the rescue of their
+land should tyranny ever again enchain it."
+
+Lamartine, to whose story of William Tell the writer is indebted,
+commenting on the legend says: "The artlessness of this history
+resembles a poem; it is a pastoral song in which a single drop of
+blood is mingled with the dew upon a leaf or a tuft of grass.
+Providence seems thus to delight in providing for every free
+community, as the founder of their independence, a fabulous or
+actual hero, conformable to the local situation, manners, and
+character of each particular race. To a rustic, pastoral people,
+like the Swiss, is given for their liberator a noble peasant; to a
+proud, aspiring race, such as the Americans, an honest soldier.
+Two distinct symbols, standing erect by the cradles of the two
+modern liberties of the world to personify their opposite natures:
+on the one hand Tell, with his arrow and the apple; on the other,
+Washington, with his sword and the law."
+
+
+
+
+
+"WESTWARD HO!"
+
+
+When the current serves, the unseen monitor that directs our
+affairs bids us step aboard our craft, and, with hand firmly
+grasping the helm, steer boldly for the distant goal.
+
+Philip D. Armour, the open-handed, large-hearted merchant prince,
+who has left a standing memorial to his benevolence in the Armour
+Institute at Chicago, heard the call to put to sea when in his
+teens.
+
+It came during the gold fever, which raged with such intensity
+from 1849 to 1851, when the wildest stories were afloat of the
+treasures that were daily being dug out of the earth in
+California. The brain of the sturdy youth, whose Scotch and
+Puritan blood tingled for some broader field than the village
+store and his father's farm in Stockbridge, New York, was haunted
+by the tales of adventure and fortune wafted across the continent
+from the new El Dorado. "I brooded over the difference," he says,
+"between tossing hay in the hot sun and digging gold by handfuls,
+until, one day, I threw down the pitchfork, went to the house, and
+told mother that I had quit that kind of work."
+
+Armour was nineteen years old when he determined to seek his
+fortune in California. His determination once formed, he lost no
+time in carrying it out. As much of the journey across the plains
+was to be made on foot, he first provided himself with a pair of
+stout boots. Then he packed his extra clothing in an old
+carpetbag, and with a light heart bade his family good-by.
+
+He had induced a young friend, Calvin Gilbert, to accompany him in
+his search for fortune. The two youths joined the motley crowd of
+adventurers who were flocking from all quarters to the Land of
+Promise, and set out on their journey.
+
+Tramping over the plains, crossing rivers in tow-boats and
+ferryboats, and riding in trains and on wagons when they could,
+the adventurers, after many weary months, reached their
+destination. During the journey young Armour became sick, but was
+tenderly nursed back to health by his companion.
+
+"I had scarcely any money when I arrived at the gold fields," said
+Armour, "but I struck right out and found a place where I could
+dig, and in a little time I struck pay dirt."
+
+He entered into partnership with a Mr. Croarkin, and, with
+characteristic energy, kept digging and taking his turn at the
+rude housekeeping in the shanty which he and his partner shared.
+"Croarkin would cook one week," he says, "and I the next, and we
+would have a clean-up Sunday morning We baked our own bread, and
+kept a few hens, too, which supplied us with fresh eggs."
+
+The young gold hunter, however, did not find nuggets as "plentiful
+as blackberries," but he found within himself that which led him
+to a bonanza far exceeding his wildest dreams of "finds" in the
+gold fields.
+
+He discovered his business ability; he learned how to economize,
+how to rely upon himself, even to the extent of baking his own
+bread.
+
+
+
+
+
+THREE GREAT AMERICAN SONGS AND THEIR AUTHORS
+
+THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER
+
+
+"Poetry and music," says Sir John Lubbock, "unite in song. From
+the earliest ages song has been the sweet companion of labor. The
+rude chant of the boatman floats upon the water, the shepherd
+sings upon the hill, the milkmaid in the dairy, the plowman in the
+field. Every trade, every occupation, every act and scene of life,
+has long had its own especial music. The bride went to her
+marriage, the laborer to his work, the old man to his last long
+rest, each with appropriate and immemorial music."
+
+It is strange that Lubbock did not mention specifically the power
+of music in inspiring the soldier as he marches to the defense of
+his country, or in arousing the spirit of patriotism and kindling
+the love of country, whether in peace or war, in every bosom. "Let
+me make the songs of a country," Fletcher of Saltoun has well
+said, "and I care not who makes its laws."
+
+Not to know the words and the air of the national anthem or chief
+patriotic songs of one's country is considered little less than a
+disgrace. To know something of their authors and the occasion
+which inspired them, or the conditions under which they were
+composed, gives additional interest to the songs themselves.
+
+Francis Scott Key, author of "The Star-spangled Banner," one of
+the, if not the most, popular of our national songs, was born in
+Frederick County, Maryland, on August 1, 1779. He was the son of
+John Ross Key, an officer in the Revolutionary army.
+
+Young Key's early education was carried on under the direction of
+his father. Later he became a student in St. John's College, from
+which institution he was graduated in his nineteenth year.
+Immediately after his graduation he began to study law under his
+uncle, Philip Barton Key, one of the ablest lawyers of his time.
+He was admitted to the bar in 1801, and commenced to practice in
+Fredericktown, Maryland, where he won the reputation of an
+eloquent advocate. After a few years' practice in Fredericktown,
+he removed to Washington, where he was appointed district attorney
+for the District of Columbia.
+
+Young Key was as widely known and admired as a writer of hymns and
+ballads as he was as a lawyer of promise. But the production of
+the popular national anthem which crowned him with immortality has
+so overshadowed the rest of his life work that we remember him
+only as its author.
+
+The occasion which inspired "The Star-spangled Banner" must always
+be memorable in the annals of our country. The war with the
+British had been about two years in progress, when, in August,
+1814, a British fleet arrived in the Chesapeake, and an army under
+General Ross landed about forty miles from the city of Washington.
+
+The army took possession of Washington, burnt the capitol, the
+President's residence, and other public buildings, and then sailed
+around by the sea to attack Baltimore. The fleet was to bombard
+Fort McHenry, while the land forces were to attack the city.
+
+The commanding officers of the fleet and land army, Admiral
+Cockburn and General Ross, made their headquarters in Upper
+Marlboro, Maryland, at the house of Dr. William Beanes, whom they
+held as their prisoner.
+
+Francis Scott Key, who was a warm friend of Dr. Beanes, went to
+President Madison in order to enlist his aid in securing the
+release of Beanes. The president furnished Key with a vessel, and
+instructed John L. Skinner, agent for the exchange of prisoners,
+to accompany him under a flag of truce to the British fleet.
+
+The British commander agreed to release Dr. Beanes, but would not
+permit Key and his party to return then, lest they should carry
+back important information to the American side. He boastingly
+declared, however, that the defense could hold out only a few
+hours, and that Baltimore would then be in the hands of the
+British.
+
+Skinner and Key were sent on board the Surprise, which was under
+the command of Admiral Cockburn's son. But after a short time they
+were allowed to return to their own vessel, and from its deck they
+saw the American flag waving over Fort McHenry and witnessed the
+bombardment.
+
+All through the night the furious attack of the British continued.
+The roar of cannon and the bursting of shells was incessant. It is
+said that as many as fifteen hundred shells were hurled at the
+fort.
+
+Shortly before daybreak the firing ceased. Key and his companions
+waited in painful suspense to know the result. In the intense
+silence that followed the cannonading, each one asked himself if
+the flag of his country was still waving on high, or if it had
+been hauled down to give place to that of England. They strained
+their eyes in the direction of Baltimore, but the darkness
+revealed nothing.
+
+At last day dawned, and to their delight the little party saw the
+American flag still floating over Fort McHenry. Key's heart was
+stirred to its depths, and in a glow of patriotic enthusiasm he
+immediately wrote down a rough draft of "The Star-spangled
+Banner."
+
+On his arrival in Baltimore he perfected the first copy of the
+song, and gave it to Captain Benjamin Eades, of the 27th Baltimore
+Regiment, saying that he wished it to be sung to the air of
+"Anacreon in Heaven." Eades had it put in type, and took the first
+proof to a famous old tavern near the Holliday Street Theater, a
+favorite resort of actors and literary people of that day. The
+verses were read to the company assembled there, and Frederick
+Durang, an actor, was asked to sing them to the air designated by
+the author. Durang, mounting a chair, sang as requested. The song
+was enthusiastically received. From that moment it became the
+great popular favorite that it has ever since been, and that it
+will continue to be as long as the American republic exists.
+
+Key died in Baltimore on January 11, 1843. A monument was erected
+to his memory by the munificence of James Lick, a Californian
+millionaire. The sculptor to whom the work was intrusted was the
+celebrated W. W. Story, who completed it in 1887. The monument,
+which is fifty-one feet high, stands in Golden Gate Park, San
+Francisco. It is built of travertine, in the form of a double
+arch, under which a bronze statue of Key is seated. A bronze
+figure, representing America with an unfolded flag, supports the
+arch.
+
+On the occasion of the unveiling of this statue, the New York Home
+Journal contained an appreciative criticism of Key as a poet, and
+the following estimate of his greatest production.
+
+"The poetry of the 'Star-spangled Banner' has touches of delicacy
+for which one looks in vain in most national odes, and is as near
+a true poem as any national ode ever was. The picture of the
+'dawn's early light' and the tricolor, half concealed, half
+disclosed, amid the mists that wreathed the battle-sounding
+Patapsco, is a true poetic concept.
+
+"The 'Star-spangled Banner' has the peculiar merit of not being a
+tocsin song, like the 'Marseillaise.' Indeed, there is not a
+restful, soothing, or even humane sentiment in all that stormy
+shout. It is the scream of oppressed humanity against its
+oppressor, presaging a more than quid pro quo; and it fitly
+prefigured the sight of that long file of tumbrils bearing to the
+Place de la Revolution the fairest scions of French aristocracy.
+On the other hand, 'God Save the King,' in its original, has one
+or two lines as grotesque as 'Yankee Doodle' itself; yet we have
+paraphrased it in 'America,' and made it a hymn meet for all our
+churches. But the 'Star-spangled Banner' combines dignity and
+beauty, and it would be hard to find a line of it that could be
+improved upon."
+
+Over the simple grave of Francis Scott Key, in Frederick,
+Maryland, there is no other monument than the "star-spangled
+banner." In storm and in sunshine, in summer and in winter, its
+folds ever float over the resting place of the man who has
+immortalized it in verse. No other memorial could so fitly
+commemorate the life and death of this simple, dignified,
+patriotic American.
+
+"A sweet, noble life," says a recent writer, "was that of the
+author of our favorite national hymn--a life of ideal refinement,
+piety, scholarly gentleness. Little did he think that his voice
+would be the storm song, the victor shout, of conquering America
+to resound down and down the ages!"
+
+THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER
+
+Oh! say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
+  What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
+Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
+  O'er the rampart we watched, were so gallantly streaming,
+And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
+Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there,
+  Oh! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
+  O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
+
+On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
+  Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
+What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
+  As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
+Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
+In full glory reflected now shines on the stream,
+  'Tis the star-spangled banner' oh, long may it wave
+  O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
+
+And where is that band, who so vauntingly swore
+  That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
+A home and a country should leave us no more?
+  Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
+No refuge could save the hireling and slave,
+From the terror of death and the gloom of the grave,
+  And the star spangled banner in triumph shall wave
+  O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
+
+Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
+  Between their loved homes and the war's desolation,
+Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven rescued land
+  Praise the power that has made and preserved us a nation.
+Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just,
+And this be our motto, "In God is our trust"
+  And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
+  O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
+
+
+
+
+
+II. AMERICA
+
+
+    "And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith;
+    Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith!
+    But he shouted a song for the brave and the free--
+    Just read on his medal, 'My Country of Thee.'"
+
+In these lines of his famous Reunion Poem, "The Boys," Dr. Oliver
+Wendell Holmes commemorated his old friend and college-mate, Dr.
+Samuel Francis Smith, author of "America."
+
+Samuel Francis Smith was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on October
+21, 1808. He attended the Latin School in his native city, and it
+is said that when only twelve years old he could "talk Latin." He
+entered Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1825, and
+graduated in the famous class of 1829, of which Dr. Oliver Wendell
+Holmes, James Freeman Clarke, William E. Channing, and other
+celebrated Americans were members.
+
+Dr. Smith, like so many other noted men, "worked his way through
+college." He did this principally by coaching other students, and
+by making translations from the German "Conversations-Lexicon" for
+the "American Cyclopedia."
+
+After graduating from Harvard, he immediately entered Andover
+Theological Seminary. Three years later, in 1832, he wrote, among
+others, his most famous hymn, "America," of which the "National
+Cyclopedia of American Biography" says, "It has found its way
+wherever an American heart beats or the English language is
+spoken, and has probably proved useful in stirring the patriotic
+spirit of the American people."
+
+Dr. Smith himself often said that he had heard "America" sung
+"halfway round the world, under the earth in the caverns of
+Manitou, Colorado, and almost above the earth near the top of
+Pike's Peak."
+
+The hymn, as every child knows, is sung to the air of the national
+anthem of England,--"God Save the King." The author came upon it
+in a book of German music, and by it was inspired to write the
+words of "America," a work which he accomplished in half an hour.
+Many years after, referring to its impromptu composition, he
+wrote: "If I had anticipated the future of it, doubtless I should
+have taken more pains with it. Such as it is, I am glad to have
+contributed this mite to the cause of American freedom."
+
+In a magazine article, written several years ago, Mr. Herbert
+Heywood gave an interesting account of an interview with Dr.
+Smith, who told him the story of the writing of the hymn himself.
+
+"'I wrote "America,"' he said, 'when I was a theological student
+at Andover, during my last year there. In February, 1832, I was
+poring over a German book of patriotic songs which Lowell Mason,
+of Boston, had sent me to translate, when I came upon one with a
+tune of great majesty. I hummed it over, and was struck with the
+ease with which the accompanying German words fell into the music.
+I saw it was a patriotic song, and while I was thinking of
+translating it, I felt an impulse to write an American patriotic
+hymn. I reached my hand for a bit of waste paper, and, taking my
+quill pen, wrote the four verses in half an hour. I sent it with
+some translations of the German songs to Lowell Mason, and the
+next thing I knew of it I was told it had been sung by the Sunday-
+school children at Park Street Church, Boston, at the following
+Fourth of July celebration. The house where I was living at the
+time was on the Andover turnpike, a little north of the seminary
+building. I have been in the house since I left it in September,
+1832, but never went into my old room.'" This room is now visited
+by patriotic Americans from every part of the country.
+
+Two years after "America" was written, Dr. Smith became pastor of
+the First Baptist Church in Waterville, Maine, and also professor
+of modern languages in Waterville College, which is now known as
+Colby University. His great industry and zeal, both as a clergyman
+and student and teacher of languages, enabled him to perform the
+duties of both positions successfully. He was a noted linguist,
+and could read books in fifteen different languages. He could
+converse in most of the modern European tongues, and at eighty-six
+was engaged in studying Russian.
+
+In 1842 Dr. Smith was made pastor of the First Baptist Church,
+Newton Center, Massachusetts, where he made his home for the rest
+of his life.
+
+"When he died, in November, 1895," says Mr. Heywood, "he was
+living in the old brown frame-house at Newton Center,
+Massachusetts, which had been his home for over fifty years. It
+stood back from the street, on the brow of a hill sloping gently
+to a valley on the north. Pine trees were in the front and rear,
+and the sun, from his rising to his setting, smiled upon that
+abode of simple greatness. The house was faded and worn by wind
+and weather, and was in perfect harmony with its surroundings--
+the brown grass sod that peeped from under the snow, the dull-
+colored, leafless elms, and the gray, worn stone steps leading up
+from the street.
+
+"An air of gentle refinement pervaded the interior, and every room
+spoke of its inmate. But perhaps the library was best loved of all
+by Dr. Smith, for here it was that his work went on. Here, beside
+a sunny bay window, stood his work table, and his high-backed,
+old-fashioned chair, with black, rounded arms. All about the room
+were ranged his bookcases, and an old, tall clock marked the
+flight of time that was so kind to the old man. His figure was
+short, his shoulders slightly bowed, and around his full, ruddy
+face, that beamed with kindness, was a fringe of white hair and
+beard."
+
+Dr. Smith resigned his pastorate of the Newton church in 1854, and
+became editorial secretary of the American Baptist Missionary
+Union. In 1875 he went abroad for the first time, and spent a year
+in European travel. Five years later he went to India and the
+Burmese empire. During his travels he visited Christian missionary
+stations in France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Turkey, Greece, Sweden,
+Denmark, Burmah, India, and Ceylon.
+
+The latter years of his life were devoted almost entirely to
+literary work. He wrote numerous poems which were published in
+magazines and newspapers, but never collected in book form. His
+hymns, numbering over one hundred, are sung by various Christian
+denominations. "The Morning Light is Breaking" is a popular
+favorite. Among his other published works are "Missionary
+Sketches," "Rambles in Mission Fields," a "History of Newton," and
+a "Life of Rev. Joseph Grafton." Besides his original hymns, he
+translated many from other languages, and wrote numerous magazine
+articles and sketches during his long and busy life.
+
+Dr. Smith's vitality and enthusiasm remained with him to the last.
+A great-grandfather when he died in his eighty-seventh year, he
+was an inspiration to the younger generations growing up around
+him. He was at work almost to the moment of his death, and still
+actively planning for the future.
+
+His great national hymn, if he had left nothing else, will keep
+his memory green forever in the hearts of his countrymen. It is
+even more popular to-day, after seventy-one years have elapsed,
+than it was when first sung in Park Street Church by the Sunday-
+school children of Boston. Its patriotic ring, rather than its
+literary merit, renders it sweet to the ear of every American.
+Wherever it is sung, the feeble treble of age will join as
+enthusiastically as the joyous note of youth in lendering the
+inspiring strains of
+
+
+AMERICA
+
+My country, 'tis of thee,
+Sweet land of liberty,
+  Of thee I sing,
+Land where my fathers died,
+Land of the pilgrim's pride,
+From every mountain side,
+  Let freedom ring.
+
+My native country, thee,
+Land of the noble, free,
+   Thy name I love;
+I love thy rocks and rills,
+Thy woods and templed hills,--
+My heart with rapture thrills,
+   Like that above.
+
+Let music swell the breeze,
+And ring from all the trees
+   Sweet freedom's song;
+Let mortal tongues awake,
+Let all that breathe partake,
+Let rocks their silence break,
+   The sound prolong.
+
+Our fathers' God, to Thee,
+Author of Liberty,
+   To Thee we sing;
+Long may our land be bright
+With freedom's holy light,--
+Protect us by thy might,
+   Great God, our King.
+
+
+
+
+
+III. THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC
+
+
+"No single influence," says United States Senator George F. Hoar
+of Massachusetts, "has had so much to do with shaping the destiny
+of a nation--as nothing more surely expresses national character
+--than what is known as the national anthem."
+
+There is some difference of opinion as to which of our patriotic
+hymns or songs is distinctively the national anthem of America.
+Senator Hoar seems to have made up his mind in favor of "The
+Battle Hymn of the Republic." Writing of its author, Julia Ward
+Howe, in 1903, he said: "We waited eighty years for our American
+national anthem. At last God inspired an illustrious and noble
+woman to utter in undying verse the thought which we hope is
+forever to animate the soldier of the republic:--
+
+    "'In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea
+    With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;
+    As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
+            While God is marching on.'"
+
+Mrs. Julia Ward Howe is as widely known for her learning and
+literary and poetic achievements as she is for her work as a
+philanthropist and reformer.
+
+She was born in New York City, in a stately mansion near the
+Bowling Green, on May 27, 1819. From her birth she was fortunate
+in possessing the advantages that wealth and high social position
+bestow. Her father, Samuel Ward, the descendant of an old colonial
+family, was a member of a leading banking firm of New York. Her
+mother, Julia Cutter Ward, was a most charming and accomplished
+woman. She died very young, however, while her little daughter
+Julia was still a child. Mr. Ward was a man of advanced ideas, and
+was determined that his daughters should have, as far as possible,
+the same educational advantages as his sons.
+
+Of course, in those early days there were no separate colleges for
+women, and they would not be admitted to men's colleges. It was
+impossible for Mr. Ward to overcome these difficulties wholly, but
+he did the next best thing he could for his girls. He engaged as
+their tutor the learned Dr. Joseph Green Cogswell, and instructed
+him to put them through the full curriculum of Harvard College.
+
+On her entrance into society the "little Miss Ward," as Julia had
+been called from her childhood, at once became a leader of the
+cultured and fashionable circle in which she moved. In her
+father's home she met the most distinguished American men of
+letters of that time. The liberal education which she had received
+made the young girl feel perfectly at her ease in such society. In
+addition to other accomplishments, she was mistress of several
+ancient and modern languages, and a musical amateur of great
+promise.
+
+In 1843 Miss Ward was married to Dr. Samuel G. Howe, director of
+the Institute for the Blind in South Boston, Massachusetts.
+Immediately after their marriage Dr. and Mrs. Howe went to Europe,
+where they traveled for some time. The home which they established
+in Boston on their return became a center for the refined and
+literary society of Boston and its environment. Mrs. Howe's grace,
+learning, and accomplishments made her a charming hostess and fit
+mistress of such a home.
+
+Her literary talent was developed at a very early age. One of her
+friends has humorously said that "Mrs. Howe wrote leading articles
+from her cradle." However this may be, it is undoubtedly true that
+at seventeen she contributed valuable articles to a leading New
+York magazine. In 1854 she published her first volume of poems,
+"Passion Flowers." Other volumes, including collections of her
+later poems, books of travel, and a biography of Margaret Fuller,
+were afterward published. For more than half a century she has
+been a constant contributor to the leading magazines of the
+country.
+
+Since 1869 Mrs. Howe has been a leader in the movement for woman's
+suffrage, and both by lecturing and writing has supported every
+effort put forth for the educational and general advancement of
+her sex.
+
+Although in her eightieth year when the writer conversed with her
+a few years ago, Mrs. Howe was then full of youthful enthusiasm,
+and her interest in the great movements of the world was as keen
+as ever. Age had in no way lessened her intellectual vigor.
+Surrounded by her children and grandchildren, and one great-
+grandchild, she recently celebrated her eighty-fourth birthday.
+
+The story of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" has been left to
+the last, not because it is the least important, but, on the
+contrary, because it is one of the most important works of her
+life. Certain it is that the "Battle Hymn" will live and thrill
+the hearts of Americans centuries after its author has passed on
+to the other life.
+
+The hymn was written in Washington, in November, 1861, the first
+year of our Civil War. Dr. and Mrs. Howe were visiting friends in
+that city. During their stay, they went one day with a party to
+see a review of Union troops. The review, however, was interrupted
+by a movement of the Confederate forces which were besieging the
+city. On their return, the carriage in which Mrs. Howe and her
+friends were seated was surrounded by soldiers. Stirred by the
+scene and the occasion, she began to sing "John Brown," to the
+delight of the soldiers, who heartily joined in the refrain.
+
+At the close of the song Mrs. Howe expressed to her friends the
+strong desire she felt to write some words which might be sung to
+this stirring tune. But she added that she feared she would never
+be able to do so.
+
+"That night," says her daughter, Maude Howe Eliot, "she went to
+sleep full of thoughts of battle, and awoke before dawn the next
+morning to find the desired verses immediately present to her
+mind. She sprang from her bed, and in the dim gray light found a
+pen and paper, whereon she wrote, scarcely seeing them, the lines
+of the poem. Returning to her couch, she was soon asleep, but not
+until she had said to herself, 'I like this better than anything I
+have ever written before.'"
+
+THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC
+
+Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
+He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are
+stored;
+He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
+                His truth is marching on.
+
+I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps;
+They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
+I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps;
+                His day is marching on.
+
+I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel:
+"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
+Let the Hero born of woman crush the serpent with his heel,
+                Since God is marching on."
+
+He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
+He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat:
+Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
+                Our God is marching on.
+
+In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
+With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
+As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
+                While God is marching on.
+
+
+
+
+
+TRAINING FOR GREATNESS
+
+GLIMPSES OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S BOYHOOD
+
+
+In pronouncing a eulogy on Henry Clay, Lincoln said: "His example
+teaches us that one can scarcely be so poor but that, if he will,
+he can acquire sufficient education to get through the world
+respectably."
+
+Endowed as he was with all the qualities that make a man truly
+great, Lincoln's own life teaches above all other things the
+lesson he drew from that of Henry Clay. Is there in all the length
+and breadth of the United States to-day a boy so poor as to envy
+Abraham Lincoln the chances of his boyhood? The story of his life
+has been told so often that nothing new can be said about him. Yet
+every fresh reading of the story fills the reader anew with wonder
+and admiration at what was accomplished by the poor backwoods boy.
+
+Let your mind separate itself from all the marvels of the
+twentieth century. Think of a time when railroads and telegraph
+wires, telephones, great ocean steamers, lighting by gas and
+electricity, daily newspapers (except in a few centers), great
+circulating libraries, and the hundreds of conveniences which are
+necessities to the people of to-day, were unknown. Even the very
+rich at the beginning of the nineteenth century could not buy the
+advantages that are free to the poorest boy at the beginning of
+the twentieth century. When Lincoln was a boy, thorns were used
+for pins; cork covered with cloth or bits of bone served as
+buttons; crusts of rye bread were used by the poor as substitutes
+for coffee, and dried leaves of certain herbs for tea.
+
+Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a log cabin in
+Hardin County, now La Rue County, Kentucky. His father, Thomas
+Lincoln, was not remarkable either for thrift or industry. He was
+tall, well built, and muscular, expert with his rifle, and a noted
+hunter, but he did not possess the qualities necessary to make a
+successful pioneer farmer. The character of the mother of Abraham,
+may best be gathered from his own words: "All that I am or hope to
+be," he said when president of the United States, "I owe to my
+angel mother. Blessings on her memory!"
+
+It was at her knee he learned his first lessons from the Bible.
+With his sister Sarah, a girl two years his senior, he listened
+with wonder and delight to the Bible stories, fairy tales, and
+legends with which the gentle mother entertained and instructed
+them when the labors of the day were done.
+
+When Abraham was about four years old, the family moved from the
+farm on Nolin Creek to another about fifteen miles distant. There
+the first great event in his life took place. He went to school.
+Primitive as was the log-cabin schoolhouse, and elementary as were
+the acquirements of his first schoolmaster, it was a wonderful
+experience for the boy, and one that he never forgot.
+
+In 1816 Thomas Lincoln again decided to make a change. He was
+enticed by stories that came to him from Indiana to try his
+fortunes there. So, once more the little family "pulled up stakes"
+and moved on to the place selected by the father in Spencer
+County, about a mile and a half from Gentryville. It was a long,
+toilsome journey through the forest, from the old home in Kentucky
+to the new one in Indiana. In some places they had to clear their
+way through the tangled thickets as they journeyed along. The
+stock of provisions they carried with them was supplemented by
+game snared or shot in the forest and fish caught in the river.
+These they cooked over the wood fire, kindled by means of tinder
+and flint. The interlaced branches of trees and the sky made the
+roof of their bedchamber by night, and pine twigs their bed.
+
+When the travelers arrived at their destination, there was no time
+for rest after their journey. Some sort of shelter had to be
+provided at once for their accommodation. They hastily put up a
+"half-faced camp"--a sort of rude tent, with an opening on one
+side. The framework of the tent was of upright posts, crossed by
+thin slabs, cut from the trees they felled. The open side, or
+entrance, was covered with "pelts," or half-dressed skins of wild
+animals. There was no ruder dwelling in the wilds of Indiana, and
+no poorer family among the settlers than the new adventurers from
+Kentucky. They were reduced to the most primitive makeshifts in
+order to eke out a living. There was no lack of food, however, for
+the woods were full of game of all kinds, both feathered and
+furred, and the streams and rivers abounded with fish. But the
+home lacked everything in the way of comfort or convenience.
+
+Abraham, who was then in his eighth year, has been described as a
+tall, ungainly, fast-growing, long-legged lad, clad in the garb of
+the frontier. This consisted of a shirt of linsey-woolsey, a
+coarse homespun material made of linen and wool, a pair of home-
+made moccasins, deerskin leggings or breeches, and a hunting shirt
+of the same material. This costume was completed by a coonskin
+cap, the tail of the animal being left to hang down the wearer's
+back as an ornament.
+
+This sturdy lad, who was born to a life of unremitting toil, was
+already doing a man's work. From the time he was four years old,
+away back on the Kentucky farm, he had contributed his share to
+the family labors. Picking berries, dropping seeds, and doing
+other simple tasks suited to his strength, he had thus early begun
+his apprenticeship to toil. In putting up the "half-faced" camp,
+he was his father's principal helper. Afterward, when they built a
+more, substantial cabin to take the place of the camp, he learned
+to handle an ax, a maul, and a wedge. He helped to fell trees,
+fashion logs, split rails, and do other important work in building
+the one-roomed cabin, which was to be the permanent home of the
+family. He assisted also in making the rough tables and chairs and
+the one rude bedstead or bed frame which constituted the principal
+furniture of the cabin. In his childhood Abraham did not enjoy the
+luxury of sleeping on a bedstead. His bed was simply a heap of dry
+leaves, which occupied a corner of the loft over the cabin. He
+climbed to it every night by a stepladder, or rather a number of
+pegs driven into the wall.
+
+Rough and poor and full of hardship as his life was, Lincoln was
+by no means a sad or unhappy boy. On the contrary, he was full of
+fun and boyish pranks. His life in the open air, the vigorous
+exercise of every muscle which necessity forced upon him, the
+tonic of the forests which he breathed from his infancy, his
+interest in every living and growing thing about him,--all helped
+to make him unusually strong, healthy, buoyant, and rich in animal
+spirits.
+
+The first great sorrow of his life came to him in the death of his
+dearly loved mother in 1818. The boy mourned for her as few
+children mourn even for the most loving parent. Day after day he
+went from the home made desolate by her death to weep on her grave
+under the near-by trees.
+
+There were no churches in the Indiana wilderness, and the visits
+of wandering ministers of religion to the scattered settlements
+were few and far between. Little Abraham was grieved that no
+funeral service had been held over his dead mother. He felt that
+it was in some sense a lack of respect to her. He thought a great
+deal about the matter, and finally wrote a letter to a minister
+named Elkins, whom the family had known in Kentucky. Several
+months after the receipt of the letter Parson Elkins came to
+Indiana. On the Sabbath morning after his arrival, in the presence
+of friends who had come long distances to assist, he read the
+funeral service over the grave of Mrs. Lincoln. He also spoke in
+touching words of the tender Christian mother who lay buried
+there. This simple service greatly comforted the heart of the
+lonely boy.
+
+Some time after Thomas Lincoln brought a new mother to his
+children from Kentucky. This was Mrs. Sally Bush Johnston, a young
+widow, who had been a girlhood friend of Nancy Hanks. She had
+three children,--John, Sarah, and Matilda Johnston,--who
+accompanied her to Indiana. The second Mrs. Lincoln brought a
+stock of household goods and furniture with her from Kentucky, and
+with the help of these made so many improvements in the rude log
+cabin that her stepchildren regarded her as a sort of magician or
+wonder worker. She was a good mother to them, intelligent, kind,
+and loving.
+
+He was ten years old at this time, and had been to school but
+little. Indeed, he says himself that he only went to school "by
+littles," and that all his schooling "did not amount to more than
+a year." But he had learned to read when he was a mere baby at his
+mother's knee; and to a boy who loved knowledge as he did, this
+furnished the key to a broad education. His love of reading
+amounted to a passion. The books he had access to when a boy were
+very few; but they were good ones, and he knew them literally from
+cover to cover. They were the Bible, "Robinson Crusoe," "Pilgrim's
+Progress," a "History of the United States," and Weems's "Life of
+Washington." Some of these were borrowed, among them the "Life of
+Washington," of which Abraham afterward became the happy owner.
+The story of how he became its owner has often been told.
+
+The book had been loaned to him by a neighbor, a well-to-do farmer
+named Crawford. After reading from it late into the night by the
+light of pine knots, Abraham carried it to his bedroom in the
+loft. He placed it in a crack between the logs over his bed of dry
+leaves, so that he could reach to it as soon as the first streaks
+of dawn penetrated through the chinks in the log cabin.
+Unfortunately, it rained heavily during the night, and when he
+took down the precious volume in the morning, he found it badly
+damaged, all soddened and stained by the rain. He was much
+distressed, and hurried to the owner of the book as soon as
+possible to explain the mishap.
+
+"I'm real sorry, Mr. Crawford," he said, in concluding his
+explanation, "and want to fix it up with you somehow, if you can
+tell me any way, for I ain't got the money to pay for it with."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Crawford, "being as it's you, Abe, I won't be
+hard on you. Come over and shuck corn three days, and the book's
+yours."
+
+The boy was delighted with the result of what at first had seemed
+a great misfortune. Verily, his sorrow was turned into joy. What!
+Shuck corn only three days and become owner of the book that told
+all about his greatest hero! What an unexpected piece of good
+fortune!
+
+Lincoln's reading had revealed to him a world beyond his home in
+the wilderness. Slowly it dawned upon him that one day he might
+find his place in that great world, and he resolved to prepare
+himself with all his might for whatever the future might hold.
+
+"I don't intend to delve, grub, shuck corn, split rails, and the
+like always," he told Mrs. Crawford after he had finished reading
+the "Life of Washington." "I'm going to fit myself for a
+profession."
+
+"Why, what do you want to be now?" asked Mrs. Crawford, in
+surprise. "Oh, I'll be president," said the boy, with a smile.
+
+"You'd make a pretty president, with all your tricks and jokes,
+now wouldn't you?" said Mrs. Crawford.
+
+"Oh, I'll study and get ready," was the reply, "and then maybe the
+chance will come."
+
+If the life of George Washington, who had all the advantages of
+culture and training that his time afforded, was an inspiration to
+Lincoln, the poor hard-working backwoods boy, what should the life
+of Lincoln be to boys of to-day? Here is a further glimpse of the
+way in which he prepared himself to be president of the United
+States. The quotation is from Ida M. Tarbell's "Life of Lincoln."
+
+"Every lull in his daily labor he used for reading, rarely going
+to his work without a book. When plowing or cultivating the rough
+fields of Spencer County, he found frequently a half hour for
+reading, for at the end of every long row the horse was allowed to
+rest, and Lincoln had his book out and was perched on stump or
+fence, almost as soon as the plow had come to a standstill. One of
+the few people left in Gentryville who still remembers Lincoln,
+Captain John Lamar, tells to this day of riding to mill with his
+father, and seeing, as they drove along, a boy sitting on the top
+rail of an old-fashioned, stake-and-rider worm fence, reading so
+intently that he did not notice their approach. His father,
+turning to him, said: 'John, look at that boy yonder, and mark my
+words, he will make a smart man out of himself. I may not see it,
+but you'll see if my words don't come true.' 'That boy was Abraham
+Lincoln,' adds Mr. Lamar, impressively."
+
+Lincoln's father was illiterate, and had no sympathy with his
+son's efforts to educate himself. Fortunately for him, however,
+his stepmother helped and encouraged him in every way possible.
+Shortly before her death she said to a biographer of Lincoln: "I
+induced my husband to permit Abe to read and study at home, as
+well as at school. At first he was not easily reconciled to it,
+but finally he too seemed willing to encourage him to a certain
+extent. Abe was a dutiful son to me always, and we took particular
+care when he was reading not to disturb him,--would let him read
+on and on till he quit of his own accord."
+
+Lincoln fully appreciated his stepmother's sympathy and love for
+him, and returned them in equal measure. It added greatly to his
+enjoyment of his reading and studies to have some one to whom he
+could talk about them, and in after life he always gratefully
+remembered what his second mother did for him in those early days
+of toil and effort.
+
+If there was a book to be borrowed anywhere in his neighborhood,
+he was sure to hear about it and borrow it if possible. He said
+himself that he "read through every book he had ever heard of in
+that county for a circuit of fifty miles."
+
+And how he read! Boys who have books and magazines and papers in
+abundance in their homes, besides having thousands of volumes to
+choose from in great city libraries, can have no idea of what a
+book meant to this boy in the wilderness. He devoured every one
+that came into his hands as a man famishing from hunger devours a
+crust of bread. He read and re-read it until he had made the
+contents his own.
+
+"From everything he read," says Miss Tarbell, "he made long
+extracts, with his turkey-buzzard pen and brier-root ink. When he
+had no paper he would write on a board, and thus preserve his
+selections until he secured a copybook. The wooden fire shovel was
+his usual slate, and on its back he ciphered with a charred stick,
+shaving it off when it had become too grimy for use. The logs and
+boards in his vicinity he covered with his figures and quotations.
+By night he read and worked as long as there was light, and he
+kept a book in the crack of the logs in his loft to have it at
+hand at peep of day. When acting as ferryman on the Ohio in his
+nineteenth year, anxious, no doubt, to get through the books of
+the house where he boarded before he left the place, he read every
+night until midnight."
+
+His stepmother said: "He read everything he could lay his hands
+on, and when he came across a passage that struck him, he would
+write it down on boards if he had no paper, and keep it by him
+until he could get paper. Then he would copy it, look at it,
+commit it to memory, and repeat it."
+
+His thoroughness in mastering everything he undertook to study was
+a habit acquired in childhood. How he acquired this habit he tells
+himself. "Among my earliest recollections I remember how, when a
+mere child," he says, "I used to get irritated when anybody talked
+to me in a way I could not understand. I do not think I ever got
+angry at anything else in my life; but that always disturbed my
+temper, and has ever since. I can remember going to my little
+bedroom, after hearing the neighbors talk of an evening with my
+father, and spending no small part of the night walking up and
+down and trying to make out what was the exact meaning of some of
+their--to me--dark sayings.
+
+"I could not sleep, although I tried to, when I got on such a hunt
+for an idea until I had caught it; and when I thought I had got
+it, I was not satisfied until I had repeated it over and over;
+until I had put it in language plain enough, as I thought, for any
+boy I knew to comprehend. This was a kind of passion with me, and
+it has stuck by me; for I am never easy now when I am handling a
+thought, till I have bounded it north and bounded it south and
+bounded it east and bounded it west."
+
+With all his hard study, reading, and thinking, Lincoln was not a
+bookworm, nor a dull companion to the humble, unschooled people
+among whom his youth was spent. On the contrary, although he was
+looked up to as one whose acquirements in "book learning" had
+raised him far above every one in his neighborhood, he was the
+most popular youth in all the country round. No "husking bee," or
+"house raising" or merry-making of any kind was complete if
+Abraham was not present. He was witty, ready of speech, a good
+story-teller, and had stored his memory with a fund of humorous
+anecdotes, which he always used to good purpose and with great
+effect. He had committed to memory, and could recite all the
+poetry in the various school readers used at that time in the log-
+cabin schoolhouse. He could make rhymes himself, and even make
+impromptu speeches that excited the admiration of his hearers. He
+was the best wrestler, jumper, runner, and the strongest of all
+his young companions. Even when a mere youth he could lift as much
+as three full-grown men; and, "if you heard him fellin' trees in a
+clearin'," said his cousin, Dennis Hanks, "you would say there was
+three men at work by the way the trees fell. His ax would flash
+and bite into a sugar tree or sycamore, and down it would come."
+
+His kindness and tenderness of heart were as great as his strength
+and agility. He loved all God's creatures, and cruelty to any of
+them always aroused his indignation. Only once did he ever attempt
+to kill any of the game in the woods, which the family considered
+necessary for their subsistence. He refers to this occasion in an
+autobiography, written by him in the third person, in the year
+1860.
+
+"A few days before the completion of his eighth year," he says,
+"in the absence of his father, a flock of wild turkeys approached
+the new log cabin; and Abraham, with a rifle gun, standing inside,
+shot through a crack and killed one of them. He has never since
+pulled the trigger on any larger game."
+
+Any suffering thing, whether it was animal, man, woman, or child,
+was sure of his sympathy and aid. Although he never touched
+intoxicating drinks himself, he pitied those who lost manhood by
+their use. One night on his way home from a husking bee or house
+raising, he found an unfortunate man lying on the roadside
+overcome with drink. If the man were allowed to remain there, he
+would freeze to death. Lincoln raised him from the ground and
+carried him a long distance to the nearest house, where he
+remained with him during the night. The man was his firm friend
+ever after.
+
+Women admired him for his courtesy and rough gallantry, as well as
+for his strength and kindness of heart; and he, in his turn,
+reverenced women, as every noble, strong man does. This big, bony,
+tall, awkward young fellow, who at eighteen measured six feet
+four, was as ready to care for a baby in the absence of its mother
+as he was to tell a good story or to fell a tree. Was it any
+wonder that he was popular with all kinds of people?
+
+His stepmother says of him: "Abe was a good boy, and I can say
+what scarcely one woman--a mother--can say in a thousand; Abe
+never gave me a cross word or look, and never refused in fact or
+appearance to do anything I requested him. I never gave him a
+cross word in all my life. His mind and mine--what little I had--
+seemed to run together. He was here after he was elected
+president. He was a dutiful son to me always. I think he loved me
+truly. I had a son, John, who was raised with Abe. Both were good
+boys; but I must say, both now being dead, that Abe was the best
+boy I ever saw or expect to see."
+
+Wherever he went, or whatever he did, he studied men and things,
+and gathered knowledge as much by observation as from books and
+whatever news-papers or other publications he could get hold of.
+He used to go regularly to the leading store in Gentryville, to
+read a Louisville paper, taken by the proprietor of the store, Mr.
+Jones. He discussed its contents, and exchanged views with the
+farmers who made the store their place of meeting. His love of
+oratory was great. When the courts were in session in Boonville, a
+town fifteen miles distant from his home, whenever he could spare
+a day, he used to walk there in the morning and back at night, to
+hear the lawyers argue cases and make speeches. By this time
+Abraham himself could make an impromptu speech on any subject with
+which he was at all familiar, good enough to win the applause of
+the Indiana farmers.
+
+So, his boyhood days, rough, hard-working days, but not devoid of
+fun and recreation, passed. Abraham did not love work any more
+than other country boys of his age, but he never shirked his
+tasks. Whether it was plowing, splitting rails, felling trees,
+doing chores, reaping, threshing, or any of the multitude of
+things to be done on a farm, the work was always well done.
+Sometimes, to make a diversion, when he was working as a "hired
+hand," he would stop to tell some of his funny stories, or to make
+a stump speech before his fellow-workers, who would all crowd
+round him to listen; but he would more than make up for the time
+thus spent by the increased energy with which he afterward worked.
+Doubtless the other laborers, too, were refreshed and stimulated
+to greater effort by the recreation he afforded them and the
+inspiration of his example.
+
+Thomas Lincoln had learned carpentry and cabinet making in his
+youth, and taught the rudiments of these trades to his son; so
+that in addition to his skill and efficiency in all the work that
+falls to the lot of a pioneer backwoods farmer, Abraham added the
+accomplishment of being a fairly good carpenter. He worked at
+these trades with his father whenever the opportunity offered.
+When he was not working for his family, he was hired out to the
+neighboring farmers. His highest wage was twenty-five cents a day,
+which he always handed over to his father.
+
+Lincoln got his first glimpse of the world beyond Indiana when he
+worked for several months as a ferryman and boatman on the Ohio
+River, at Anderson Creek. He saw the steamers and vessels of all
+kinds sailing up and down the Ohio, laden with produce and
+merchandise, on their way to and from western and southern towns.
+He came in contact with different kinds of people from different
+states, and thus his views of the world and its people became a
+little more extended, and his longing to be somebody and to do
+something worth while in the world waxed stronger daily.
+
+His work as a ferryman showed him that there were other ways of
+making a little money than by hiring out to the neighbors at
+twenty-five cents a day. He resolved to take some of the farm
+produce to New Orleans and sell it there. This project led to the
+unexpected earning of a dollar, which added strength to his
+purpose to prepare himself to take the part of a man in the world
+outside of Indiana. Let him tell in his own words, as he related
+the story to Mr. Seward years afterward, how he earned the
+dollar:--
+
+"Seward," he said, "did you ever hear how I earned my first
+dollar?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Seward.
+
+"Well," replied he, "I was about eighteen years of age, and
+belonged, as you know, to what they call down south the 'scrubs';
+people who do not own land and slaves are nobodies there; but we
+had succeeded in raising, chiefly by my labor, sufficient produce,
+as I thought, to justify me in taking it down the river to sell.
+After much persuasion I had got the consent of my mother to go,
+and had constructed a flatboat large enough to take the few
+barrels of things we had gathered to New Orleans. A steamer was
+going down the river. We have, you know, no wharves on the western
+streams, and the custom was, if passengers were at any of the
+landings, they were to go out in a boat, the steamer stopping and
+taking them on board. I was contemplating my new boat, and
+wondering whether I could make it stronger or improve it in any
+part, when two men with trunks came down to the shore in
+carriages, and looking at the different boats singled out mine,
+and asked, 'Who owns this?' I answered modestly, 'I do.' 'Will
+you,' said one of them, 'take us and our trunks to the steamer?'
+'Certainly,' said I. I was very glad to have the chance of earning
+something, and supposed that each of them would give me a couple
+of bits. The trunks were put in my boat, the passengers seated
+themselves on them, and I sculled them out to the steamer. They
+got on board, and I lifted the trunks and put them on the deck.
+The steamer was about to put on steam again, when I called out,
+'You have forgotten to pay me.' Each of them took from his pocket
+a silver half-dollar and threw it on the bottom of my boat. I
+could scarcely believe my eyes as I picked up the money. You may
+think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me
+like a trifle, but it was a most important incident in my life. I
+could scarcely credit that I, the poor boy, had earned a dollar in
+less than a day; that by honest work I had earned a dollar. I was
+a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time."
+
+In March, 1828, Lincoln was employed by one of the leading men of
+Gentryville to take a load of produce down the Mississippi River
+to New Orleans. For this service he was paid eight dollars a month
+and his rations.
+
+This visit to New Orleans was a great event in his life. It showed
+him the life of a busy cosmopolitan city, which was a perfect
+wonderland to him. Everything he saw aroused his astonishment and
+interest, and served to educate him for the larger life on which
+he was to enter later.
+
+The next important event in the history of the Lincoln family was
+their removal from Indiana to Illinois in 1830. The farm in
+Indiana had not prospered as they hoped it would,--hence the
+removal to new ground in Illinois. Abraham drove the team of oxen
+which carried their household goods from the old home to their new
+abiding place near Decatur, in Macon County, Illinois. Driving
+over the muddy, ill-made roads with a heavily laden team was hard
+and slow work, and the journey occupied a fortnight. When they
+arrived at their destination, Lincoln again helped to build a log
+cabin for the family home. With his stepbrother he also, as he
+said himself, "made sufficient of rails to fence ten acres of
+ground, and raised a crop of sown corn upon it the same year."
+
+In that same year, 1830, he reached his majority. It was time for
+him to be about his own business. He had worked patiently and
+cheerfully since he was able to hold an ax in his hands for his
+own and the family's maintenance. They could now get along without
+him, and he felt that the time had come for him to develop himself
+for larger duties.
+
+He left the log cabin, penniless, without even a good suit of
+clothes. The first work he did when he became his own master was
+to supply this latter deficiency. For a certain Mrs. Millet he
+"split four hundred rails for every yard of brown jeans, dyed with
+white walnut bark, necessary to make a pair of trousers."
+
+For nearly a year he continued to work as a rail splitter and farm
+"hand." Then he was hired by a Mr. Denton Offut to take a flatboat
+loaded with goods from Sangamon town to New Orleans. So well
+pleased was Mr. Offut with the way in which Lincoln executed his
+commission that on his return he engaged him to take charge of a
+mill and store at New Salem.
+
+There, as in every other place in which he had resided, he became
+the popular favorite. His kindness of heart, his good humor, his
+skill as a story teller, his strength, his courtesy, manliness,
+and honesty were such as to win all hearts. He would allow no man
+to use profane language before women. A boorish fellow who
+insisted on doing so in the store on one occasion, in spite of
+Lincoln's protests, found this out to his cost. Lincoln had
+politely requested him not to use such language before ladies, but
+the man persisted in doing so. When the women left the store, he
+became violently angry and began to abuse Lincoln. He wanted to
+pick a quarrel with him. Seeing this Lincoln said, "Well, if you
+must be whipped, I suppose I may as well whip you as any other
+man," and taking the man out of the store he gave him a well-
+merited chastisement. Strange to say, he became Lincoln's friend
+after this, and remained so to the end of his life.
+
+His scrupulous honesty won for him in the New Salem community the
+title of "Honest Abe," a title which is still affectionately
+applied to him. On one occasion, having by mistake overcharged a
+customer six and a quarter cents, he walked three miles after the
+store was closed in order to restore the customer's money. At
+another time, in weighing tea for a woman, he used a quarter-pound
+instead of a half-pound weight. When he went to use the scales
+again, he discovered his mistake, and promptly walked a long
+distance to deliver the remainder of the tea.
+
+Lincoln's determination to improve himself continued to be the
+leading object of his life. He said once to his fellow-clerk in
+the store, "I have talked with great men, and I do not see how
+they differ from others." His observation had taught him that the
+great difference in men's positions was not due so much to one
+having more talents or being more highly gifted than another, but
+rather to the way in which one cultivated his talent or talents
+and another neglected his.
+
+Up to this time he had not made a study of grammar, but he
+realized that if he were to speak in public he must learn to speak
+grammatically. He had no grammar, and did not know where to get
+one. In this dilemma he consulted the schoolmaster of New Salem,
+who told him where and from whom he could borrow a copy of
+Kirkham's Grammar. The place named was six miles from New Salem.
+But that was nothing to a youth so hungry for an education as
+Lincoln. He immediately started for the residence of the fortunate
+people who owned a copy of Kirkham's Grammar. The book was loaned
+to him without hesitation. In a short time its contents were
+mastered, the student studying at night by the light of shavings
+burned in the village cooper's shop. "Well," said Lincoln to
+Greene, his fellow-clerk, when he had turned over the last page of
+the grammar, "if that's what they call a science, I think I'll go
+at another." The conquering of one thing after another, the
+thorough mastery of whatever he undertook to do, made the next
+thing easier of accomplishment than it would otherwise have been.
+In order to practice debating he used to walk seven or eight miles
+to debating clubs. No labor or trouble seemed too great to him if
+by it he could increase his knowledge or add to his acquirements.
+No matter how hard or exhausting his work, whether it was rail
+splitting, plowing, lumbering, boating, or store keeping, he
+studied and read every spare minute, and often until late at
+night.
+
+But this sketch has already exceeded the limits of Lincoln's
+boyhood, for he had reached his twenty-second year while in the
+store in New Salem. How he was made captain of a company raised to
+fight against the Indians, how he kept store for himself, learned
+surveying, was elected a member of the Illinois legislature,
+studied law, and was admitted to the bar in Springfield, and how
+he finally became president of the United States,--all this
+belongs to a later chapter of his life.
+
+Lincoln's rise from the poorest of log cabins to the White House,
+to be president of the greatest republic in the world, is one of
+the most inspiring stories in American biography. Yet he was not a
+genius, unless a determination to make the most of one's self and
+to persist in spite of all hardships, discouragements, and
+hindrances, be genius. He made himself what he was--one of the
+noblest, greatest, and best of men--by sheer dint of hard work and
+the cultivation of the talents that had been given him. No
+fortunate chances, no influential friends, no rare opportunities
+played a part in his life. Alone and unaided he made, by the grace
+of God, the great career which will forever challenge the
+admiration of mankind.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MARBLE WAITETH
+
+
+                    THE STATUE
+
+    The marble waits, immaculate and rude;
+     Beside it stands the sculptor, lost in dreams.
+     With vague, chaotic forms his vision teems.
+    Fair shapes pursue him, only to elude
+    And mock his eager fancy. Lines of grace
+      And heavenly beauty vanish, and, behold!
+      Out through the Parian luster, pure and cold,
+    Glares the wild horror of a devil's face.
+
+    The clay is ready for the modeling.
+      The marble waits: how beautiful, how pure,
+      That gleaming substance, and it shall endure,
+    When dynasty and empire, throne and king
+    Have crumbled back to dust. Well may you pause,
+      Oh, sculptor-artist! and, before that mute,
+      Unshapen surface, stand irresolute!
+    Awful, indeed, are art's unchanging laws.
+
+    The thing you fashion out of senseless clay,
+      Transformed to marble, shall outlive your fame;
+      And, when no more is known your race, or name,
+    Men shall be moved by what you mold to-day.
+    We all are sculptors. By each act and thought,
+      We form the model. Time, the artisan,
+      Stands, with his chisel, fashioning the Man,
+    And stroke by stroke the masterpiece is wrought.
+
+    Angel or demon? Choose, and do not err!
+      For time but follows as you shape the mold,
+      And finishes in marble, stern and cold,
+    That statue of the soul, the character.
+    By wordless blessing, or by silent curse,
+      By act and motive,--so do you define
+      The image which time copies, line by line,
+    For the great gallery of the Universe.
+
+    ELLA WHEELER WILCOX.
+
+At the gateway of a new year, emerging from the gay carelessness
+of childhood, stand troops of buoyant, eager-eyed youths and
+maidens, gazing down the vista of the future with glad expectancy.
+
+Fancy spreads upon her canvas radiant pictures of the joys and
+triumphs which await them in the unborn years. In their unclouded
+springtime there is no place for the specters of doubt and fear
+which too often overshadow the autumn of life.
+
+In this formative period, the soul is unsoiled by warfare with the
+world. It lies, like a block of pure, uncut Parian marble, ready
+to be fashioned into--what?
+
+Its possibilities are limitless. You are the sculptor. An unseen
+hand places in yours the mallet and the chisel, and a voice
+whispers: "The marble waiteth. What will you do with it?"
+
+In this same block the angel and the demon lie sleeping. Which
+will you call into life? Blows of some sort you must strike. The
+marble cannot be left uncut. From its crudity some shape must be
+evolved. Shall it be one of beauty, or of deformity; an angel, or
+a devil? Will you shape it into a statue of beauty which will
+enchant the world, or will you call out a hideous image which will
+demoralize every beholder?
+
+What are your ideals, as you stand facing the dawn of this new
+year with the promise and responsibility of the new life on which
+you have entered, awaiting you? Upon them depends the form which
+the rough block shall take. Every stroke of the chisel is guided
+by the ideal behind the blow.
+
+Look at this easy-going, pleasure-loving youth who takes up the
+mallet and smites the chisel with careless, thoughtless blows. His
+mind is filled with images of low, sensual pleasures; the passing
+enjoyment of the hour is everything to him; his work, the future,
+nothing. He carries in his heart, perhaps, the bestial motto of
+the glutton, "Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die;" or
+the flippant maxim of the gay worldling, "A short life and a merry
+one; the foam of the chalice for me;" forgetting that beneath the
+foam are the bitter dregs, which, be he ever so unwilling, he must
+swallow, not to-day, nor yet to-morrow,--perhaps not this year nor
+next; but sometime, as surely as the reaping follows the sowing,
+will the bitter draught follow the foaming glass of unlawful
+pleasure.
+
+As the years go by, and youth merges into manhood, the sculptor's
+hand becomes more unsteady. One false blow follows another in
+rapid succession. The formless marble takes on distorted outlines.
+Its whiteness has long since become spotted. The sculptor, with
+blurred vision and shattered nerves, still strikes with aimless
+hand, carving deep gashes, adding a crooked line here, another
+there, soiling and marring until no trace of the virgin purity of
+the block of marble which was given him remains. It has become so
+grimy, so demoniacally fantastic in its outlines, that the
+beholder turns from it with a shudder.
+
+Not far off we see another youth at work on a block of marble,
+similar in every detail to the first. The tools with which he
+plies his labor differ in no wise from those of the worker we have
+been following.
+
+The glory of the morning shines upon the marble. Glowing with
+enthusiasm, the light of a high purpose illuminating his face, the
+sculptor, with steady hand and eye, begins to work out his ideal.
+The vision that flits before him is so beautiful that he almost
+fears the cunning of his hand will be unequal to fashioning it
+from the rigid mass before him. Patiently he measures each blow of
+the mallet. With infinite care he chisels each line and curve.
+Every stroke is true.
+
+Months stretch into years, and still we find the sculptor at work.
+Time has given greater precision to his touch, and the skill of
+the youth, strengthened by noble aspirations and right effort, has
+become positive genius in the man. If he has not attained the
+ideal that haunted him, he has created a form so beautiful in its
+clear-cut outlines, so imposing in the majesty of its purity and
+strength, that the beholder involuntarily bows before it.
+
+THE MARBLE WAITETH. WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH IT?
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Stories from Life
+by Marden vice Harden
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+Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. 
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+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Stories from Life
+by Marden vice Harden
+
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