strengthened, refined, made more
elastic or more resistant, and adapted to the use each artisan dreams
of. If every blow should fracture it, if every furnace should burn the
life out of it, if every roller should pulverize it, of what use would
it be? It has that virtue, those qualities that withstand all; that
draw profit from every test, and come out triumphant in the end. In
the iron the qualities are, in the main, inherent; but in ourselves
they are largely matters of growth, culture, and development, and all
are subject to the dominating will.

Just as each artisan sees in the crude iron some finished, refined
product, so must we see in our lives glorious possibilities, if we
would but realize them. If we see only horseshoes or knife-blades, all
our efforts and struggles will never produce hairsprings. We must
realize our own adaptability to great ends; we must resolve to
struggle, to endure trials and tests, to pay the necessary price,
confident that the result will pay us for our suffering, our trials,
and our efforts.

Those who shrink from the forging, the rolling, and the drawing out,
are the ones who fail, the "nobodies," the faulty characters, the
criminals. Just as a bar of iron, if exposed to the elements, will
oxidize, and become worthless, so will character deteriorate if there
is no constant effort to improve its form, to increase its ductility,
to temper it, or to better it in some way.

It is easy to remain a common bar of iron, or comparatively so, by
becoming merely a horseshoe; but it is hard to raise your life-product
to higher values.

Many of us consider our natural gift-bars poor, mean, and inadequate,
compared with those of others; but, if we are willing, by patience,
toil, study, and struggle, to hammer, draw out, and refine, to work on
and up from clumsy horseshoes to delicate hairsprings, we can, by
infinite patience and persistence, raise the value of the raw material
to almost fabulous heights. It was thus that Columbus, the weaver,
Franklin, the journeyman printer, Aesop, the slave, Homer, the beggar,
Demosthenes, the cutler's son, Ben Jonson, the bricklayer, Cervantes,
the common soldier, and Haydn, the poor wheelwright's son, developed
their powers, until they towered head and shoulders above other men.

There is very little difference between the material given to a hundred
average boys and girls at birth, yet one with no better means of
improvement than the others, perh