ilt."

To be born of parents who do not know how to get on, and be one of a big
family, is a great blessing. We are taught by antithesis quite as much
as by injunction and direction. And chiefest of all we are taught
through struggle, and not through immunity in that vacuum called
complete success.

Peter Cooper's childhood was one of toil and ceaseless endeavor. Just
one year did he go to school, just one year in all his life, and then
for only half a day at a time. His short ration of books made him
anxious to know, anxious to learn, and so his disadvantages gave him a
thing which college often fails to bestow--that is, the Study Habit. And
the reason he got it was because he wanted to go to school and could
not. Happy Peter Cooper!

And yet he never really knew that many a youth is sent to school and
dinged at by pedagogues until examinations become a nightmare, and
college a penalty. Thus it happens that many a college graduate is so
rejoiced on getting through and standing "on the threshold," that he
never looks in a book afterward. Of such a one we can very properly say,
"He got his education in college"--when all the world knows that the
education that really amounts to anything is that which we get out of
Life.

* * * * *

The climbing propensities of Peter Cooper were made manifest very early
in life. Later, they developed into a habit; and shifting ground from
the physical to the psychic, he continued to climb all his life.

Also he made others climb, for no man climbeth by himself alone. At
twelve, Peter Cooper proudly walked the ridgepole of the family
residence, to the great astonishment and admiration of the little girls
and the jealousy of the boys. When the children would run in
breathlessly and announce to the busy mother, "Peter, he is on the
house!" the mother would reply, "Then he will not get drowned in the
Hudson River!" At other times it was, "Peter, he is swimming across the
river!" The mother then found solace in the thought that the boy was not
in immediate danger of sliding off the house and breaking his neck.
Once, little Peter climbed a lofty elm to get a hanging bird's-nest that
was built far out on a high projecting limb. He reached the nest all
right, but his diagnosis was not correct, for it proved to be a hornets'
nest, beyond dispute.

To escape the wrath of the hornets, Peter descended the tree "overhand,"
which being interpreted means that he d