his way in a dead calm.
--JOHN NEAL.

"Kites rise against, not with, the wind."

Then welcome each rebuff,
That turns earth's smoothness rough,
Each sting, that bids not sit nor stand, but go.
--BROWNING.

"What a fine profession ours would be if there were no gibbets!" said
one of two highwaymen who chanced to pass a gallows. "Tut, you
blockhead," replied the other, "gibbets are the making of us; for, if
there were no gibbets, every one would be a highwayman." Just so with
every art, trade, or pursuit; it is the difficulties that scare and keep
out unworthy competitors.

"Life," says a philosopher, "refuses to be so adjusted as to eliminate
from it all strife and conflict and pain. There are a thousand tasks,
that, in larger interests than ours, must be done, whether we want them
or no. The world refuses to walk upon tiptoe, so that we may be able to
sleep. It gets up very early and stays up very late, and all the while
there is the conflict of myriads of hammers and saws and axes with the
stubborn material that in no other way can be made to serve its use and
do its work for man. And then, too, these hammers and axes are not
wielded without strain or pang, but swung by the millions of toilers who
labor with their cries and groans and tears. Nay, our temple building,
whether it be for God or man, exacts its bitter toll, and fills life
with cries and blows. The thousand rivalries of our daily business, the
fierce animosities when we are beaten, the even fiercer exultation when
we have beaten, the crashing blows of disaster, the piercing scream of
defeat--these things we have not yet gotten rid of, nor in this life
ever will. Why should we wish to get rid of them? We are here, my
brother, to be hewed and hammered and planed in God's quarry and on
God's anvil for a nobler life to come." Only the muscle that is used is
developed.

"Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better
things," said Beecher. "Far up the mountain side lies a block of
granite, and says to itself, 'How happy am I in my serenity--above the
winds, above the trees, almost above the flight of birds! Here I rest,
age after age, and nothing disturbs me.'

"Yet what is it? It is only a bare block of granite, jutting out of the
cliff, and its happiness is the happiness of death.

"By and by comes the miner, and with strong and repeated strokes he
drills a hole in its top, and the rock says, 'Wh