icious wild grapes in the woods. This was in the year 1000. Here
where the city of Newport, R. I., stands, they spent many months, and
then returned to Greenland with their vessel loaded with grapes and
strange kinds of wood. The voyage was successful, and no doubt Eric was
sorry he had been frightened by the bad omen.

"Not every vessel that sails from Tarshish will bring back the Gold of
Ophir. But shall it therefore rot in the harbor? No! Give its sails to
the wind!"

Men who have dared have moved the world, often before reaching the prime
of life. It is astonishing what daring to begin and perseverance have
enabled even youths to achieve. Alexander, who ascended the throne at
twenty, had conquered the whole known world before dying at
thirty-three. Julius Caesar captured eight hundred cities, conquered
three hundred nations, and defeated three million men, became a great
orator and one of the greatest statesmen known, and still was a young
man. Washington was appointed adjutant-general at nineteen, was sent at
twenty-one as an ambassador to treat with the French, and won his first
battle as a colonel at twenty-two. Lafayette was made general of the
whole French army at twenty. Charlemagne was master of France and
Germany at thirty. Conde was only twenty-two when he conquered at
Rocroi. Galileo was but eighteen when he saw the principle of the
pendulum in the swinging lamp in the cathedral at Pisa. Peel was in
Parliament at twenty-one. Gladstone was in Parliament before he was
twenty-two, and at twenty-four he was a Lord of the Treasury. Elizabeth
Barrett Browning was proficient in Greek and Latin at twelve; De Quincey
at eleven. Robert Browning wrote at eleven poetry of no mean order.
Cowley, who sleeps in Westminster Abbey, published a volume of poems at
fifteen. N. P. Willis won lasting fame as a poet before leaving college.
Macaulay was a celebrated author before he was twenty-three. Luther was
but twenty-nine when he nailed his famous thesis to the door of the
bishop and defied the pope. Nelson was a lieutenant in the British navy
before he was twenty. He was but forty-seven when he received his death
wound at Trafalgar. Charles the Twelfth was only nineteen when he gained
the battle of Narva; at thirty-six Cortes was the conqueror of Mexico;
at thirty-two Clive had established the British power in India.
Hannibal, the greatest of military commanders, was only thirty when, at
Cannae, he dealt an almost annihila