"If Eric's in robust health, and has slept well, and is at the top of
his condition, and thirty years old at his departure from Greenland,"
says Emerson, "he will steer west and his ships will reach
Newfoundland. But take Eric out and put in a stronger and bolder man,
and the ships will sail six hundred, one thousand, fifteen hundred
miles further, and reach Labrador and New England. There is no chance
in results." Obstacles tower before the living man like mountain
chains, stopping his path and hindering his progress. He surmounts
them by his energy. He makes a new path over them. He climbs upon
them to mountain heights. They cannot stop him. They do not much
delay him. He transmutes difficulties into power, and makes temporary
failures into stepping-stones to ultimate success.

How many might have been giants who are only dwarfs. How many a one
has died "with all his music in him."

It is astonishing what men who have come to their senses late in life
have accomplished by a sudden resolution.

Arkwright was fifty years of age when he began to learn English grammar
and improve his writing and spelling. Benjamin Franklin was past fifty
before he began the study of science and philosophy. Milton, in his
blindness, was past the age of fifty when he sat down to complete his
world-known epic, and Scott at fifty-five took up his pen to redeem an
enormous liability. "Yet I am learning," said Michael Angelo, when
threescore years and ten were past, and he had long attained the
highest triumphs of his art.

Even brains are second in importance to will. The vacillating man is
always pushed aside in the race of life. It is only the weak and
vacillating who halt before adverse circumstances and obstacles. A man
with an iron will, with a determination that nothing shall check his
career, if he has perseverance and grit, is sure to succeed. We may
not find time for what we would like, but what we long for and strive
for with all our strength, we usually approximate if we do not fully
reach. Hunger breaks through stone walls; stern necessity will find a
way or make one.

Success is also a great physical as well as mental tonic, and tends to
strengthen the will-power. Dr. Johnson says: "Resolutions and success
reciprocally produce each other." Strong-willed men, as a rule, are
successful men, and great success is almost impossible without it.

A man who can resolve vigorously upon a course of action, and t