So Gorgo sat
at her father's feet, and listened while the stranger offered more and
more money if Cleomenes would aid him to become king in a neighboring
country. She did not understand the matter, but when she saw her father
look troubled and hesitate, she took hold of his hand and said, "Papa,
come away--come, or this strange man will make you do wrong." The king
went away with the child, and saved himself and his country from
dishonor. Character is power, even in a child. When grown to womanhood,
Gorgo was married to the hero Leonidas. One day a messenger brought a
tablet sent by a friend who was a prisoner in Persia. But the closest
scrutiny failed to reveal a single word or line on the white waxen
surface, and the king and all his noblemen concluded that it was sent as
a jest. "Let me take it," said Queen Gorgo; and, after looking it all
over, she exclaimed, "There must be some writing underneath the wax!"
They scraped away the wax and found a warning to Leonidas from the
Grecian prisoner, saying that Xerxes was coming with his immense host to
conquer all Greece. Acting on this warning, Leonidas and the other kings
assembled their armies and checked the mighty host of Xerxes, which is
said to have shaken the earth as it marched.

"I fear John Knox's prayers more than an army of ten thousand men," said
Mary, Queen of Scotland.

"The man behind the sermon," said William M. Evarts, "is the secret of
John Hall's power." In fact if there is not a man with a character
behind it nothing about it is of the slightest consequence.

Thackeray says, "Nature has written a letter of credit upon some men's
faces which is honored wherever presented. You can not help trusting
such men; their very presence gives confidence. There is a 'promise to
pay' in their very faces which gives confidence, and you prefer it to
another man's indorsement." _Character is credit._

In the great monetary panic of 1857, a meeting was called of the various
bank presidents of New York City. When asked what percentage of specie
had been drawn during the day, some replied fifty per cent., some even
as high as seventy-five per cent., but Moses Taylor of the City Bank
said: "We had in the bank this morning, $400,000; this evening,
$470,000." While other banks were badly "run," the confidence in the
City Bank under Mr. Taylor's management was such that people had
deposited in that institution what they had drawn from other banks.
Character gives confide