t was
always open so that anyone could read his inmost thoughts.

The ability to do hard work, and to stick to it, is the right hand of
genius and the best substitute for it,--in fact, that is genius.

If young people were to represent Lincoln's total success by one
hundred, they would probably expect to find some brilliant faculty
which would rank at least fifty per cent of the total. But I think
that the verdict of history has given his honesty of purpose, his
purity and unselfishness of motive as his highest attributes, and
certainly these qualities are within the reach of the poorest boy and
the humblest girl in America.

Suppose we rank his honesty, his integrity twenty per cent of the
total, his dogged persistence, his ability for hard work ten per cent,
his passion for wholeness, for completeness, for doing everything to a
finish ten more, his aspiration, his longing for growth, his yearning
for fulness of life ten more. The reader can see that it would be easy
to make up the hundred per cent, without finding any one quality which
could be called genius; that the total of his character would be made
up of the sum of the commonest qualities, the most ordinary virtues
within the reach of the poorest youth in the land. There is no one
quality in his entire make-up so overpowering, so commanding that it
could be ranked as genius.

What an inestimable blessing to the world, what an encouragement, an
inspiration to poor boys and poor girls that his great achievement can
be accounted for by the triumph in his character of those qualities
which are beyond the reach of money, of family, of influence, but that
are within the reach of the poorest and the humblest.

In a speech to the people in Colorado Mountains, Roosevelt said: "You
think that my success is quite foreign to anything you can achieve.
Let me assure you that the big prizes I have won are largely
accidental. If I have succeeded, it is only as anyone of you can
succeed, merely because I have tried to do my duty as I saw it in my
home and in my business, and as a citizen.

"If when I die the ones who know me best believe that I was a
thoughtful, helpful husband, a loving, wise and painstaking father, a
generous, kindly neighbor and an honest citizen, that will be a far
more real honor, and will prove my life to have been more successful
than the fact that I have ever been president of the United States.
Had a few events over which no one had control b