ad to accept
a situation from the fellow-clerk whom he now ridicules and affects to
despise, when the latter shall stand in the firm, dispensing benefits
and acquiring fortune."

"I have been watching the careers of young men by the thousand in this
busy city of New York for over thirty years," said Dr. Cuyler, "and I
find that the chief difference between the successful and the failures
lies in the single element of staying power. Permanent success is
oftener won by holding on than by sudden dash, however brilliant. The
easily discouraged, who are pushed back by a straw, are all the time
dropping to the rear--to perish or to be carried along on the stretcher
of charity. They who understand and practise Abraham Lincoln's homely
maxim of 'pegging away' have achieved the solidest success."

The Duke of Wellington became so discouraged because he did not advance
in the army that he applied for a much inferior position in the customs
department, but was refused. Napoleon had applied for every vacant
position for seven years before he was recognized, but meanwhile he
studied with all his might, supplementing what was considered a
thorough military education by researches and reflections which in
later years enabled him easily to teach the art of war to veterans who
had never dreamed of his novel combinations.

Reserves which carry us through great emergencies are the result of
long working and long waiting. Dr. Collyer declares that reserves mean
to a man also achievement,--"the power to do the grandest thing
possible to your nature when you feel you must, or some precious thing
will be lost,--to do well always, but best in the crisis on which all
things turn; to stand the strain of a long fight, and still find you
have something left, and so to never know you are beaten, because you
never are beaten."

He only is independent in action who has been earnest and thorough in
preparation and self-culture. "Not for school, but for life, we
learn"; and our habits--of promptness, earnestness, and thoroughness,
or of tardiness, fickleness, and superficiality--are the things
acquired most readily and longest retained.

To vary the language of another, the three great essentials to success
in mental and physical labor are Practice, Patience, and Perseverance,
but the greatest of these is Perseverance.

"Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labo