d
your majesty the Last Supper, after working on it almost daily for
seven years." He worked on his Pietro Martyn eight years. George
Stephenson was fifteen years perfecting his locomotive; Watt, twenty
years on his condensing engine. Harvey labored eight long years before
he published his discovery of the circulation of the blood. He was
then called a crack-brained impostor by his fellow physicians. Amid
abuse and ridicule he waited twenty-five years before his great
discovery was recognized by the profession.

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

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

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

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

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

Opposing circumstances create strength. Opposition gives us greater
power of resistance. To overcome one barrier gives us greater ability
to overcome the next.

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

He had begged bread, drawn maps and charts to keep from starving; he
had lost his