cover of the darkness. The next day
the wind changed, and a counter tempest brushed the water, with the
fleet upon it, from the surface of Holland. The outer dikes were
replaced at once, leaving the North Sea within its old bounds. When
the flowers bloomed the following spring, a joyous procession marched
through the streets to found the University of Leyden, in commemoration
of the wonderful deliverance of the city.

At a dinner party given in 1837, at the residence of Chancellor Kent,
in New York City, some of the most distinguished men in the country
were invited, and among them was a young and rather melancholy and
reticent Frenchman. Professor Morse was also one of the guests, and
during the evening he drew the attention of Mr. Gallatin, then a
prominent statesman, to the stranger, observing that his forehead
indicated a great intellect. "Yes," replied Mr. Gallatin, touching his
own forehead with his finger, "there is a great deal in that head of
his: but he has a strange fancy. Can you believe it? He has the idea
that he will one day be the Emperor of France. Can you conceive
anything more absurd than that?"

It did seem absurd, for this reserved Frenchman was then a poor
adventurer, an exile from his country, without fortune or powerful
connections, and yet, fourteen years later, his idea became a
fact,--his dream of becoming Napoleon III. was realized. True, before
he accomplished his purpose there were long, dreary years of
imprisonment, exile, disaster, and patient labor and hope, but he
gained his ambition at last. He was not scrupulous as to the means
employed to accomplish his ends, yet he is a remarkable example of what
pluck and energy can do.

When Mr. Ingram, publisher of the "Illustrated London News," began life
as a newsdealer at Nottingham, England, he walked ten miles to deliver
a single paper rather than disappoint a customer. Does any one wonder
that such a youth succeeded? Once he rose at two o'clock in the
morning and walked to London to get some papers because there was no
post to bring them. He determined that his customers should not be
disappointed. This is the kind of will that finds a way.

There is scarcely anything in all biography grander than the saying of
young Henry Fawcett, Gladstone's last Postmaster-General, to his
grief-stricken father, who had put out both his eyes by birdshot during
a game hunt: "Never mind, father, blindness shall not interfere with my
succ