three hundred pieces baking, one of which came out covered with
beautiful enamel.

To perfect his invention he next built a glass-furnace, carrying the
bricks on his back. At length the time came for a trial; but, though
he kept the heat up six days, his enamel would not melt. His money was
all gone, but he borrowed some, and bought more pots and wood, and
tried to get a better flux. When next he lighted his fire, he attained
no result until his fuel was gone. Tearing off the palings of his
garden fence, he fed them to the flames, but in vain. His furniture
followed to no purpose. The shelves of his pantry were then broken up
and thrown into the furnace; and the great burst of heat melted the
enamel. The grand secret was learned. Persistence had triumphed again.

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

"Know thy work and do it," said Carlyle; "and work at it like a
Hercules."

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

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

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

Perseverance built the pyramids on Egypt's plains, erected the gorgeous
temple at Jerusalem, inclosed in adamant the Chinese Empire, scaled the
stormy, cloud-capped Alps, opened a highway through the watery
wilderness of the Atlantic, leveled the forests of the new world, and
reared in its stead a community of states and nations. Perseverance
has wrought from the marble block the exquisite creations of genius,
painted on canvas the gorgeous mimicry of nature, and engraved on a
metallic surface the viewless substance of the shadow. Perseverance
has put in motion millions of spindles, winged as many flying shuttles,
harnessed thousands of iron steeds to as many freig