out character is of no great value.

"No man throws away his vote," says Francis Willard, "when he places it
in the ballot-box with his conviction behind it. The party which elected
Lincoln in 1860 polled only seven thousand votes in 1840. Revolutions
never go backward, and the fanaticisms of to-day are the victories of
to-morrow."

"O sir, we are beaten," exclaimed the general in command of Sheridan's
army, retreating before the victorious Early. "No, sir," replied the
indignant Sheridan; "you are beaten, but this army is not beaten."
Drawing his sword, he waved it above his head, and pointed it at the
pursuing host, while his clarion voice rose above the horrid din in a
command to charge once more. The lines paused, turned,--

"And with the ocean's mighty swing,
When heaving to the tempest's wing,
They hurled them on the foe;"

and the Confederate army was wildly routed.

When war with France seemed imminent, in 1798, President Adams wrote to
George Washington, then a private citizen in retirement at Mount Vernon:
"We must have your name, if you will permit us to use it; there will be
more efficacy in it than in many an army." Character is power.

When Pope Paul IV. heard of the death of Calvin he exclaimed with a
sigh, "Ah, the strength of that proud heretic lay in--riches? No!
Honors? No! But nothing could move him from his course. Holy Virgin!
With two such servants, our Church would soon be mistress of both
worlds."

Eighteen hundred years ago, when night closed over the city of Pompeii,
a lady sat in her house nursing her son of ten years of age. The child
had been ill for some days; his form was wasted, his little limbs were
shrunk; and we may imagine with what infinite anxiety she watched every
motion of the helpless one, whose existence was so dear. What did take
place we know with an exactness very remarkable. That distant mountain
which reared its awful head on the shore of the bay, Vesuvius, was
troubled that same night with an eruption, and threw into the air such
clouds of pumice-stones that the streets and squares of Pompeii became
filled, and gradually the stones grew higher and higher, until they
reached the level of the windows. There was no chance of escape then by
the doors; and those who attempted to get away stepped out of their
first floor windows and rushed over the sulphurous stones--a short
distance only, for they were quickly overpowered by the poisonous vapors
and fell