of
health and eyesight, and became the greatest historian of America in
his line. Thousands of men have put grit in place of health, eyes,
ears, hands, legs and yet have achieved marvelous success. Indeed,
most of the great things of the world have been accomplished by grit
and pluck. You can not keep a man down who has these qualities. He
will make stepping-stones out of his stumbling-blocks, and lift himself
to success.

At fifty, Barnum was a ruined man, owing thousands more than he
possessed, yet he resolutely resumed business once more, fairly
wringing success from adverse fortune, and paying his notes at the same
time. Again and again he was ruined; but phoenix-like, he rose
repeatedly from the ashes of his misfortune each time more determined
than before.

"It is all very well," said Charles J. Fox, "to tell me that a young
man has distinguished himself by a brilliant first speech. He may go
on, or he may be satisfied with his first triumph; but show me a young
man who has not succeeded at first, and nevertheless has gone on, and I
will back that young man to do better than most of those who have
succeeded at the first trial."

Cobden broke down completely the first time he appeared on a platform
in Manchester, and the chairman apologized for him. But he did not
give up speaking till every poor man in England had a larger, better,
and cheaper loaf.

See young Disraeli, sprung from a hated and persecuted race; without
opportunity, pushing his way up through the middle classes, up through
the upper classes, until he stands self-poised upon the topmost round
of political and social power. Scoffed, ridiculed, rebuffed, hissed
from the House of Commons, he simply says, "The time will come when you
will hear me." The time did come, and the boy with no chance swayed
the scepter of England for a quarter of a century.

One of the most remarkable examples in history is Disraeli, forcing his
leadership upon that very party whose prejudices were deepest against
his race, and which had an utter contempt for self-made men and
interlopers. Imagine England's surprise when she awoke to find this
insignificant Hebrew actually Chancellor of the Exchequer! He was
easily master of all the tortures supplied by the armory of rhetoric;
he could exhaust the resources of the bitterest invective; he could
sting Gladstone out of his self-control; he was absolute master of
himself and his situation. You could see that thi