eir color, and painted the
white walls of his father's cottage in Tyrol with all sorts of
pictures, at which the mountaineers gazed in wonder.

"That boy will beat me one day," said an old painter as he watched a
little fellow named Michael Angelo making drawings of pot and brushes,
easel and stool, and other articles in the studio. The barefoot boy
did persevere until he had overcome every difficulty and become a
master of his art.

William H. Prescott was a remarkable example of what a boy with "no
chance" can do. While at college, he lost one eye by a hard piece of
bread thrown during a "biscuit battle," then so common after meals;
and, from sympathy, the other eye became almost useless. But the boy
had pluck and determination, and would not lead a useless life. He set
his heart upon being a historian, and turned all his energies in that
direction. By the aid of others' eyes, he spent ten years studying
before he even decided upon a particular theme for his first book.
Then he spent ten years more, poring over old archives and manuscripts,
before he published his "Ferdinand and Isabella." What a lesson in his
life for young men! What a rebuke to those who have thrown away their
opportunities and wasted their lives!

"Galileo with an opera-glass," said Emerson, "discovered a more
splendid series of celestial phenomena than any one since with the
great telescopes. Columbus found the new world in an undecked boat."

Surroundings which men call unfavorable cannot prevent the unfolding of
your powers. From the plain fields and lowlands of Avon came the
Shakespearean genius which has charmed the world. From among the
rock-ribbed hills of New Hampshire sprang the greatest of American
orators and statesmen, Daniel Webster. From the crowded ranks of toil,
and homes to which luxury is a stranger, have often come the leaders
and benefactors of our race. Indeed, when Christ came upon earth, His
early abode was a place so poor and so much despised that men thought
He could not be the Christ, asking, in utter astonishment, "Can any
good thing come out of Nazareth?"

"I once knew a little colored boy," said Frederick Douglass, "whose
mother and father died when he was but six years old. He was a slave,
and had no one to care for him. He slept on a dirt floor in a hovel,
and in cold weather would crawl into a meal-bag head foremost, and
leave his feet in the ashes to keep them warm. Often he would roast an
ear o