he failures of life are due to the want of
grit or business nerve. It is unfortunate for a young man to start out
in business life with a weak, yielding disposition, with no resolution
or backbone to mark his own course and stick to it, with no ability to
say "No" with an emphasis, obliging this man by investing in hopeless
speculation, and rather than offend a friend, indorsing a questionable
note.

A little boy was asked how he learned to skate. "Oh, by getting up
every time I fell down," he replied.

Whipple tells a story of Massena which illustrates the masterful
purpose that plucks victory out of the jaws of defeat. "After the
defeat at Essling, the success of Napoleon's attempt to withdraw his
beaten army depended on the character of Massena, to whom the Emperor
dispatched a messenger, telling him to keep his position for two hours
longer at Aspern. This order, couched in the form of a request,
required almost an impossibility; but Napoleon knew the indomitable
tenacity of the man to whom he gave it. The messenger found Massena
seated on a heap of rubbish, his eyes bloodshot, his frame weakened by
his unparalleled exertions during a contest of forty hours, and his
whole appearance indicating a physical state better befitting the
hospital than the field. But that steadfast soul seemed altogether
unaffected by bodily prostration; half dead as he was with fatigue, he
rose painfully and said, 'Tell the Emperor that I will hold out for two
hours.' And he kept his word."

"Often defeated in battle," said Macaulay of Alexander the Great, "he
was always successful in war." He might have said the same of
Washington, and, with appropriate changes, of all who win great
triumphs of any kind.

In the battle of Marengo, the Austrians considered the day won. The
French army was inferior in numbers, and had given way. The Austrian
army extended its wings on the right and on the left, to follow up the
French. Then, though the French themselves thought the battle lost,
and the Austrians were confident it was won, Napoleon gave the command
to charge; and, the trumpet's blast being given, the Old Guard charged
down into the weakened centre of the enemy, cut it in two, rolled the
two wings up on either side, and the battle was won for France.

"Never despair," says Burke, "but if you do, work on in despair."

Once when Marshal Ney was going into battle, looking down at his knees
which were smiting together, he said,