greatest scholars of China.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everyone admires a determined, persistent man. Marcus Morton ran
sixteen times for governor of Massach