raged him still further
to try to overcome his impediment. He stammered so much that he could
not pronounce some of the letters at all, and his breath would give out
before he could get through a sentence. Finally, he determined to be
an orator cost what it might. He went to the seashore and practiced
amid the roar of the breakers with small pebbles in his mouth, in order
to overcome his stammering, and at the same time accustom himself to
the hisses and tumults of his audience. He overcame his short breath
by practicing speaking while running up steep and difficult places on
the shore. His awkward gestures were also corrected by long and
determined drill before a mirror.

Disheartened by the expense of removing the troublesome seeds, Southern
planters were seriously considering the abandonment of cotton culture.
To clean a pound of cotton required the labor of a slave for a day.
Eli Whitney, a young man from New England, teaching school in Georgia,
saw the state of affairs, and determined to invent a machine to do the
work. He worked in secret for many months in a cellar, and at last
made a machine which cleaned the cotton perfectly and rapidly. Just as
success crowned his long labor thieves broke into the cellar and stole
his model. He recovered the model, but the principle was stolen, and
other machines were made without his consent. In vain he tried to
protect his right in the courts, for Southern juries would almost
invariably decide against him. He had started the South in a great
industry, and added millions to her wealth, yet the courts united with
the men who had infringed his patents to rob him of the reward of his
ingenuity and industry. At last he abandoned the whole thing in
disgust, and turned his attention to making improvements in firearms,
and with such success that he accumulated a fortune.

Robert Collyer, who brought his bride in the steerage when he came to
America at the age of twenty-seven, worked at the anvil nine years in
Pennsylvania, and then became a preacher, soon winning national renown.

A shrewd observer says of John Chinaman: "No sooner does he put his
foot among strangers than he begins to work. No office is too menial
or too laborious for him. He has come to make money, and he will make
it. His frugality requires but little: he barely lives, but he saves
what he gets; commences trade in the smallest possible way, and is
continually adding to his store. The native scorn