tect of his own fate, but he must lay the
bricks himself. Bayard Taylor, at twenty-three, wrote: "I will become
the sculptor of my own mind's statue." His biography shows how often
the chisel and hammer were in his hands to shape himself into his ideal.

Labor is the only legal tender in the world to true success. The gods
sell everything for that, nothing without it. You will never find
success "marked down." The door to the temple of success is never left
open. Every one who enters makes his own door, which closes behind him
to all others.

Circumstances have rarely favored great men. They have fought their
way to triumph over the road of difficulty and through all sorts of
opposition. A lowly beginning and a humble origin are no bar to a
great career. The farmer's boys fill many of the greatest places in
legislatures, in business, at the bar, in pulpits, in Congress, to-day.
Boys of lowly origin have made many of the greatest discoveries, are
presidents of our banks, of our colleges, of our universities. Our
poor boys and girls have written many of our greatest books, and have
filled the highest places as teachers and journalists. Ask almost any
great man in our large cities where he was born, and he will tell you
it was on a farm or in a small country village. Nearly all of the
great capitalists of the city came from the country.

Isaac Rich, the founder of Boston University, left Cape Cod for Boston
to make his way with a capital of only four dollars. Like Horace
Greeley, he could find no opening for a boy; but what of that? He made
an opening. He found a board, and made it into an oyster stand on the
street corner. He borrowed a wheelbarrow, and went three miles to an
oyster smack, bought three bushels of oysters, and wheeled them to his
stand. Soon his little savings amounted to $130, and then he bought a
horse and cart.

Self-help has accomplished about all the great things of the world.
How many young men falter, faint, and dally with their purpose because
they have no capital to start with, and wait and wait for some good
luck to give them a lift! But success is the child of drudgery and
perseverance. It cannot be coaxed or bribed; pay the price and it is
yours. Where is the boy to-day who has less chance to rise in the
world than Elihu Burritt, apprenticed to a blacksmith, in whose shop he
had to work at the forge all the daylight, and often by candle-light?
Yet, he managed, by studyin