s on a locomotive; a Watt, twenty years on a
condensing engine; a Lady Franklin, working incessantly for twelve long
years to rescue her husband from the polar seas; a Thurlow Weed, walking
two miles through the snow with rags tied around his feet for shoes, to
borrow the history of the French Revolution, and eagerly devouring it
before the sap-bush fire; a Milton, elaborating "Paradise Lost" in a
world he could not see, and then selling it for fifteen pounds; a
Thackeray, struggling on cheerfully after his "Vanity Fair" was refused
by a dozen publishers; a Balzac, toiling and waiting in a lonely garret,
whom neither poverty, debt, nor hunger could discourage or intimidate;
not daunted by privations, not hindered by discouragements. It wants men
who can work and wait.

That is done soon enough which is done well. Soon ripe, soon rotten. He
that would enjoy the fruit must not gather the flower. He who is
impatient to become his own master is more likely to become his own
slave. Better believe yourself a dunce and work away than a genius and
be idle. One year of trained thinking is worth more than a whole college
course of mental absorption of a vast series of undigested facts. The
facility with which the world swallows up the ordinary college graduate
who thought he was going to dazzle mankind should bid you pause and
reflect. But just as certainly as man was created not to crawl on all
fours in the depths of primeval forests, but to develop his mental and
moral faculties, just so certainly he needs education, and only by means
of it will he become what he ought to become,--man, in the highest
sense of the word. Ignorance is not simply the negation of knowledge,
it is the misdirection of the mind. "One step in knowledge," says
Bulwer, "is one step from sin; one step from sin is one step nearer to
Heaven."

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CONQUEST OF OBSTACLES.

Nature, when she adds difficulties, adds brains.
--EMERSON.

Exigencies create the necessary ability to meet and conquer
them.
--WENDELL PHILLIPS.

Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous
difficulties.
--SPURGEON.

The rugged metal of the mine
Must burn before its surface shine.
--BYRON.

When a man looks through a tear in his own eye, that is a lens
which opens reaches in the unknown, and reveals orbs no
telescope could do.
--BEECHER.

No man ever worked