of things,
a way can be found or made.

Every schoolboy knows that circumstances do give clients to lawyers and
patients to physicians; place ordinary clergymen in extraordinary
pulpits; place sons of the rich at the head of immense corporations and
large houses, when they have very ordinary ability and scarcely any
experience, while poor young men with unusual ability, good education,
good character, and large experience, often have to fight their way for
years to obtain even very mediocre situations; that there are thousands
of young men of superior ability, both in the city and in the country,
who seem to be compelled by circumstances to remain in very ordinary
positions for small pay, when others about them are raised by money or
family influence into desirable places. In other words, we all know
that the best men do not always get the best places; circumstances do
have a great deal to do with our position, our salaries, our station in
life.

Every one knows that there is not always a way where there is a will;
that labor does not always conquer all things; that there are things
impossible even to him that wills, however strongly; that one can not
always make anything of himself he chooses; that there are limitations
in our very natures which no amount of will-power or industry can
overcome.

But while it is true that the will-power can not perform miracles, yet
that it is almost omnipotent, and can perform wonders, all history goes
to prove. As Shakespeare says:--

Men at some time are masters of their fates;
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Show me a man who according to popular prejudice is a victim of bad
luck, and I will show you one who has some unfortunate crooked twist of
temperament that invites disaster. He is ill-tempered, conceited, or
trifling; lacks character, enthusiasm, or some other requisite for
success.

Disraeli said that man is not the creature of circumstances, but that
circumstances are the creatures of men.

Believe in the power of will, which annihilates the sickly, sentimental
doctrine of fatalism,--you must, but can't, you ought, but it is
impossible.

Give me the man who faces what he must,

"Who breaks his birth's invidious bar,
And grasps the skirts of happy chance,
And breasts the blows of circumstance,
And grapples with his evil star."

The indomitable will, the inflexible purpose, will find a