ematical work, when a cobbler's
apprentice, on small scraps of leather; and Rittenhouse, the
astronomer, first calculated eclipses on his plow handle.

David Livingstone at ten years of age was put into a cotton factory
near Glasgow. Out of his first week's wages he bought a Latin grammar,
and studied in the night schools for years. He would sit up and study
till midnight unless his mother drove him to bed, notwithstanding he
had to be at the factory at six in the morning. He mastered Vergil and
Horace in this way, and read extensively, besides studying botany. So
eager for knowledge was he, that he would place his book before him on
the spinning-jenny, and amid the deafening roar of machinery would pore
over its pages.

"All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise and
wonder," says Johnson, "are instances of the resistless force of
perseverance: it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that
distant countries are united with canals. If a man was to compare the
effect of a single stroke of the pickax, or of one impression of the
spade, with the general design and last result, he would be overwhelmed
by the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations,
incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and
mountains are leveled, and oceans bounded, by the slender force of
human beings."

Great men never wait for opportunities; they make them. Nor do they
wait for facilities or favoring circumstances; they seize upon whatever
is at hand, work out their problem, and master the situation. A young
man determined and willing will find a way or make one. A Franklin
does not require elaborate apparatus; he can bring electricity from the
clouds with a common kite.

Great men have found no royal road to their triumph. It is always the
old route, by way of industry and perseverance.

The farmer boy, Elihu B. Washburn, taught school at ten dollars per
month, and early learned the lesson that it takes one hundred cents to
make a dollar. In after years he fought "steals" in Congress, until he
was called the "Watchdog of the Treasury."

When Elias Howe, harassed by want and woe, was in London completing his
first sewing-machine, he had frequently to borrow money to live on. He
bought beans and cooked them himself. He also borrowed money to send
his wife back to America. He sold his first machine for five pounds,
although it was worth fifty, and then he pawn