of the richest men in the world, for the entire
farm abounded in the richest of gems.

You have your own special place and work. Find it, fill it. Scarcely
a boy or girl will read these lines but has much better opportunity to
win success than Garfield, Wilson, Franklin, Lincoln, Harriet Beecher
Stowe, Frances Willard, and thousands of others. But to succeed you
must be prepared to seize and improve the opportunity when it comes.
Remember that four things come not back: the spoken word, the sped
arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.

It is one of the paradoxes of civilization that the more opportunities
are utilized, the more new ones are thereby created. New openings are
as easy to fill as ever to those who do their best; although it is not
so easy as formerly to obtain distinction in the old lines, because the
standard has advanced so much and competition has so greatly increased.
"The world is no longer clay," said Emerson, "but rather iron in the
hands of its workers, and men have got to hammer out a place for
themselves by steady and rugged blows."

Thousands of men have made fortunes out of trifles which others pass
by. As the bee gets honey from the same flower from which the spider
gets poison, so some men will get a fortune out of the commonest and
meanest things, as scraps of leather, cotton waste, slag, iron filings,
from which others get only poverty and failure. There is scarcely a
thing which contributes to the welfare and comfort of humanity, not an
article of household furniture, a kitchen utensil, an article of
clothing or of food, that is not capable of an improvement in which
there may be a fortune.

Opportunities? They are all around us. Edison found them in a baggage
car. Forces of nature plead to be used in the service of man, as
lightning for ages tried to attract his attention to the great force of
electricity, which would do his drudgery and leave him to develop the
God-given powers within him. There is power lying latent everywhere
waiting for the observant eye to discover it.

First find out what the world needs and then supply that want. An
invention to make smoke go the wrong way in a chimney might be a very
ingenious thing, but it would be of no use to humanity. The patent
office at Washington is full of wonderful devices of ingenious
mechanism, but not one in hundreds is of use to the inventor or to the
world. And yet how many families have been impoverishe