man builds
palaces, another hovels; one warehouses, another villas. Bricks and
mortar are mortar and bricks until the architect makes them something
else. The boulder which was an obstacle in the path of the weak
becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the resolute. The
difficulties which dishearten one man only stiffen the sinews of
another, who looks on them as a sort of mental spring-board by which to
vault across the gulf of failure to the sure, solid ground of full
success.

One of the greatest generals on the Confederate side in the Civil War,
"Stonewall" Jackson, was noted for his slowness. With this he
possessed great application and dogged determination. If he undertook
a task, he never let go till he had it done. So, when he went to West
Point, his habitual class response was that he was too busy getting the
lesson of a few days back to look at the one of the day. He kept up
this steady gait, and, from the least promising "plebe," came out
seventeenth in a class of seventy, distancing fifty-three who started
with better attainments and better minds. His classmates used to say
that, if the course was ten years instead of four, he would come out
first.

The world always stands aside for the determined man. You will find no
royal road to your triumph. There is no open door to the Temple of
Success.

One of the commonest of common virtues is perseverance, yet it has been
the open sesame of more fast locked doors of opportunity than have
brilliant tributes. Every man and woman can exercise this virtue of
perseverance, can refuse to stop short of the goal of ambition, can
decline to turn aside in search of pleasures that do but hinder
progress.

The romance of perseverance under especial difficulty is one of the
most fascinating subjects in history. Tenacity of purpose has been
characteristic of all characters who have left their mark on the world.
Perseverance, it has been said, is the statesman's brain, the warrior's
sword, the inventor's secret, the scholar's "open sesame."

Persistency is to talent what steam is to the engine. It is the
driving force by which the machine accomplishes the work for which it
was intended. A great deal of persistency, with a very little talent,
can be counted on to go farther than a great deal of talent without
persistency.

You cannot keep a determined man from success. Take away his money,
and he makes spurs of his poverty to urge him on. Lock him up in