spent most of that winter wrapped in a big gray comforter,
pouring his very life into his work.

Genius is intensity. Abraham Lincoln possessed such power of
concentration that he could repeat quite correctly a sermon to which he
had listened in his boyhood. Dr. O. W. Holmes, when an Andover
student, riveted his eyes on the book he was studying as though he were
reading a will that made him heir to a million.

A New York sportsman, in answer to an advertisement, sent twenty-five
cents for a sure receipt to prevent a shotgun from scattering, and
received the following; "Dear Sir: To keep a gun from scattering put in
but a single shot."

It is the men who do one thing in this world who come to the front.
Who is the favorite actor? It is a Jefferson, who devotes a lifetime
to a "Rip Van Winkle," a Booth, an Irving, a Kean, who plays one
character until he can play it better than any other man living, and
not the shallow players who impersonate all parts. It is the man who
never steps outside of his specialty or dissipates his individuality.
It is an Edison, a Morse, a Bell, a Howe, a Stephenson, a Watt. It is
Adam Smith, spending ten years on the "Wealth of Nations." It is
Gibbon, giving twenty years to his "Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire." It is a Hume, writing thirteen hours a day on his "History of
England." It is a Webster, spending thirty-six years on his
dictionary. It is a Bancroft, working twenty-six years on his "History
of the United States." It is a Field, crossing the ocean fifty times
to lay a cable, while the world ridicules. It is a Newton, writing his
"Chronology of Ancient Nations" sixteen times. It is a Grant, who
proposes to "fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." These
are the men who have written their names prominently in the history of
the world.

A one-talent man who decides upon a definite object accomplishes more
than the ten-talent man who scatters his energies and never knows
exactly what he will do. The weakest living creature, by concentrating
his powers upon one thing, can accomplish something; the strongest, by
dispersing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything. Drop after
drop, continually falling, wears a passage through the hardest rock.
The hasty tempest, as Carlyle points out, rushes over it with hideous
uproar and leaves no trace behind.

A great purpose is cumulative; and, like a great magnet, it attracts
all that is kindred along the str