Through sunshine and storm, through hurricane
and tempest, through sleet and rain, with a leaky ship, with a crew in
mutiny, it perseveres; in fact, nothing but death can subdue it, and it
dies still struggling.

The man of grit carries in his very presence a power which controls and
commands. He is spared the necessity of declaring himself, for his
grit speaks in his every act. It does not come by fits and starts, it
is a part of his life. It inspires a sublime audacity and a heroic
courage. Many of the failures of life are due to the want of grit or
business nerve. It is unfortunate for a young man to start out in
business life with a weak, yielding disposition, with no resolution or
backbone to mark his own course and stick to it; with no ability to say
"No" with an emphasis, obliging this man by investing in hopeless
speculation, and, rather than offend a friend, indorsing a questionable
note.

A little boy was asked how he learned to skate. "Oh, by getting up
every time I fell down," he replied.

Whipple tells a story of Massena which illustrates the masterful
purpose that plucks victory out of the jaws of defeat. "After the
defeat at Essling, the success of Napoleon's attempt to withdraw his
beaten army depended on the character of Massena, to whom the Emperor
dispatched a messenger, telling him to keep his position for two hours
longer at Aspern. This order, couched in the form of a request,
required almost an impossibility; but Napoleon knew the indomitable
tenacity of the man to whom he gave it. The messenger found Massena
seated on a heap of rubbish, his eyes bloodshot, his frame weakened by
his unparalleled exertions during a contest of forty hours, and his
whole appearance indicating a physical state better befitting the
hospital than the field. But that steadfast soul seemed altogether
unaffected by bodily prostration. Half dead as he was with fatigue, he
rose painfully and said courageously, 'Tell the Emperor that I will
hold out for two hours.' And he kept his word."

"Often defeated in battle," said Macaulay of Alexander the Great, "he
was always successful in war."

In the battle of Marengo, the Austrians considered the day won. The
French army was inferior in numbers, and had given way. The Austrian
army extended its wings on the right and on the left, to follow up the
French. Then, though the French themselves thought that the battle was
lost, and the Austrians were confident it