crowding, pushing, selfish, greedy world, where everything is pusher or
pushed, for a young man with no will, no grip on life? "The truest
wisdom," said Napoleon, "is a resolute determination." An iron will
without principle might produce a Napoleon; but with character it would
make a Wellington or a Grant, untarnished by ambition or avarice.

"The undivided will
'T is that compels the elements and wrings
A human music from the indifferent air."

CHAPTER XXVI

SUCCESS UNDER DIFFICULTIES

Victories that are easy are cheap. Those only are worth having which
come as the result of hard fighting.--BEECHER.

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise
above them.--WASHINGTON IRVING.

"I have here three teams that I want to get over to Staten Island,"
said a boy of twelve one day in 1806 to the innkeeper at South Amboy,
N. J. "If you will put us across, I'll leave with you one of my horses
in pawn, and if I don't send you back six dollars within forty-eight
hours you may keep the horse."

The innkeeper asked the reason for this novel proposition, and learned
that the lad's father had contracted to get the cargo of a vessel
stranded near Sandy Hook, and take it to New York in lighters. The boy
had been sent with three wagons, six horses, and three men, to carry
the cargo across a sand-spit to the lighters. The work accomplished,
he had started with only six dollars to travel a long distance home
over the Jersey sands, and reached South Amboy penniless. "I'll do
it," said the innkeeper, as he looked into the bright honest eyes of
the boy. The horse was soon redeemed.

"My son," said this same boy's mother, on the first of May, 1810, when
he asked her to lend him one hundred dollars to buy a boat, having
imbibed a strong liking for the sea; "on the twenty-seventh of this
month you will be sixteen years old. If, by that time, you will plow,
harrow, and plant with corn the eight-acre lot, I will advance you the
money." The field was rough and stony, but the work was done in time,
and well done. From this small beginning Cornelius Vanderbilt laid the
foundation of a colossal fortune.

In 1818 Vanderbilt owned two or three of the finest coasting schooners
in New York harbor, and had a capital of nine thousand dollars. Seeing
that steam-vessels would soon win supremacy over those carrying sails
only, he gave up his fine business to become the captain of a steam