g is so fascinating to a youth with high purpose, life, and
energy throbbing in his young blood as stories of men and women who
have brought great things to pass. Though these themes are as old as
the human race, yet they are ever new, and more interesting to the
young than any fiction. The cry of youth is for life! more life! No
didactic or dogmatic teaching, however brilliant, will capture a
twentieth-century boy, keyed up to the highest pitch by the pressure of
an intense civilization. The romance of achievement under
difficulties, of obscure beginnings and triumphant ends; the story of
how great men started, their struggles, their long waitings, amid want
and woe, the obstacles overcome, the final triumphs; examples, which
explode excuses, of men who have seized common situations and made them
great, of those of average capacity who have succeeded by the use of
ordinary means, by dint of indomitable will and inflexible purpose:
these will most inspire the ambitious youth. The author teaches that
there are bread and success for every youth under the American flag who
has the grit to seize his chance and work his way to his own loaf; that
the barriers are not yet erected which declare to aspiring talent,
"Thus far and no farther"; that the most forbidding circumstances
cannot repress a longing for knowledge, a yearning for growth; that
poverty, humble birth, loss of limbs or even eyesight, have not been
able to bar the progress of men with grit; that poverty has rocked the
cradle of the giants who have wrung civilization from barbarism, and
have led the world up from savagery to the Gladstones, the Lincolns,
and the Grants.

The book shows that it is the man with one unwavering aim who cuts his
way through opposition and forges to the front; that in this electric
age, where everything is pusher or pushed, he who would succeed must
hold his ground and push hard; that what are stumbling-blocks and
defeats to the weak and vacillating, are but stepping-stones and
victories to the strong and determined. The author teaches that every
germ of goodness will at last struggle into bloom and fruitage, and
that true success follows every right step. He has tried to touch the
higher springs of the youth's aspiration; to lead him to high ideals;
to teach him that there is something nobler in an occupation than
merely living-getting or money-getting; that a man may make millions
and be a failure still; to caution youth not to