lies within your knowledge. The darker the setting, the
brighter the diamond. Don't run about and tell acquaintances that you
have been unfortunate; people do not like to have unfortunate men for
acquaintances.

Beethoven was almost totally deaf and burdened with sorrow when he
produced his greatest works. Schiller wrote his best books in great
bodily suffering. He was not free from pain for fifteen years. Milton
wrote his leading productions when blind, poor, and sick. "Who best
can suffer," said he, "best can do." Bunyan said that, if it were
lawful, he could even pray for greater trouble, for the greater
comfort's sake.

"Do you know what God puts us on our backs for?" asked Dr. Payson,
smiling, as he lay sick in bed. "No," replied the visitor. "In order
that we may look upward." "I am not come to condole but to rejoice
with you," said the friend, "for it seems to me that this is no time
for mourning." "Well, I am glad to hear that," said Dr. Payson, "it is
not often I am addressed in such a way. The fact is I never had less
need of condolence, and yet everybody persists in offering it; whereas,
when I was prosperous and well, and a successful preacher, and really
needed condolence, they flattered and congratulated me."

A German knight undertook to make an immense Aeolian harp by stretching
wires from tower to tower of his castle. When he finished the harp it
was silent; but when the breezes began to blow he heard faint strains
like the murmuring of distant music. At last a tempest arose and swept
with fury over his castle, and then rich and grand music came from the
wires. Ordinary experiences do not seem to touch some lives--to bring
out any poetry, any higher manhood.

Not until the breath of the plague had blasted a hundred thousand
lives, and the great fire had licked up cheap, shabby, wicked London,
did she arise, phoenix-like, from her ashes and ruin, a grand and
mighty city.

True salamanders live best in the furnace of persecution.

"Every man who makes a fortune has been more than once a bankrupt, if
the truth were known," said Albion Tourgee. "Grant's failure as a
subaltern made him commander-in-chief, and for myself, my failure to
accomplish what I set out to do led me to what I never had aspired to."

The appeal for volunteers in the great battle of life, in exterminating
ignorance and error, and planting high on an everlasting foundation the
banner of intelligence and right, is