e prominent
publishers. At last he managed to get it into "Fraser's Magazine," the
editor of which conveyed to the author the pleasing information that
his work had been received with "unqualified disapprobation." Henry
Ward Beecher sent a half dozen articles to the publisher of a religious
paper to pay for his subscription, but they were respectfully declined.
The publishers of the "Atlantic Monthly" returned Miss Alcott's
manuscript, suggesting that she had better stick to teaching. One of
the leading magazines ridiculed Tennyson's first poems, and consigned
the young poet to oblivion. Only one of Ralph Waldo Emerson's books
had a remunerative sale. Washington Irving was nearly seventy years
old before the income from his books paid the expenses of his household.

In some respects it is very unfortunate that the old system of binding
boys out to a trade has been abandoned. To-day very few boys learn any
trade. They pick up what they know, as they go along, just as a
student crams for a particular examination, just to "get through,"
without any effort to see how much he may learn on any subject.

Think of an American youth spending twelve years with Michael Angelo,
studying anatomy that he might create the masterpiece of all art; or
with Da Vinci devoting ten years to the model of an equestrian statue
that he might master the anatomy of the horse. Most young American
artists would expect, in a quarter of that time, to sculpture an Apollo
Belvidere. While Michael Angelo was painting the Sistine Chapel he
would not allow himself time for meals or to dress or undress; but he
kept bread within reach that he might eat when hunger impelled, and he
slept in his clothes.

A rich man asked Howard Burnett to do a little thing for his album.
Burnett complied and charged a thousand francs. "But it took you only
five minutes," objected the rich man. "Yes, but it took me thirty
years to learn how to do it in five minutes."

"I prepared that sermon," said a young sprig of divinity, "in half an
hour, and preached it at once, and thought nothing of it." "In that,"
said an older minister, "your hearers are at one with you, for they
also thought nothing of it."

What the age wants is men who have the nerve and the grit to work and
wait, whether the world applaud or hiss. It wants a Bancroft, who can
spend twenty-six years on the "History of the United States;" a Noah
Webster, who can devote thirty-six years to a diction