a Gladstone, what can we common mortals hope to accomplish
by "scatteration"?

All great men have been noted for their power of concentration which
makes them oblivious of everything outside their aim. Victor Hugo
wrote his "Notre Dame" during the revolution of 1830, while the bullets
were whistling across his garden. He shut himself up in one room,
locking his clothes up in another, lest they should tempt him to go out
into the street, and spent most of that winter wrapped in a big gray
comforter, pouring his very life into his work.

Abraham Lincoln possessed such power of concentration that he could
repeat quite correctly a sermon to which he had listened in his boyhood.

A New York sportsman, in answer to an advertisement, sent twenty-five
cents for a sure receipt to prevent a shotgun from scattering, and
received the following: "Dear Sir: To keep a gun from scattering put in
but a single shot."

It is the men who do one thing in this world who come to the front.
Who is the favorite actor? It is a Jefferson, who devotes a lifetime
to a "Rip Van Winkle," a Booth, an Irving, a Kean, who plays one
character until he can play it better than any other man living, and
not the shallow players who impersonate all parts. The great man is
the one who never steps outside of his specialty or dissipates his
individuality. It is an Edison, a Morse, a Bell, a Howe, a Stephenson,
a Watt. It is an Adam Smith, spending ten years on the "Wealth of
Nations." It is a Gibbon, giving twenty years to his "Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire." It is a Hume, writing thirteen hours a day on
his "History of England." It is a Webster, spending thirty-six years
on his dictionary. It is a Bancroft, working twenty-six years on his
"History of the United States." It is a Field, crossing the ocean
fifty times to lay a cable, while the world ridicules. It is a Newton,
writing his "Chronology of Ancient Nations" sixteen times.

A one-talent man who decides upon a definite object accomplishes more
than a ten-talent man who scatters his energies and never knows exactly
what he will do. The weakest living creature, by concentrating his
powers upon one thing, can accomplish something; the strongest, by
dispersing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything.

A great purpose is cumulative; and, like a great magnet, it attracts
all that is kindred along the stream of life.

[Illustration: Joseph Jefferson]

A Yankee can splice a ro