country digging for gold. In a bank of sand some
glittering particles were found, and the whole settlement was in a
state of excitement. Fourteen weeks of the precious springtime, which
ought to have been given to plowing and planting, were consumed in this
stupid nonsense. Even the Indians ridiculed the madness of the men
who, for imaginary grains of gold, were wasting their chances for a
crop of corn.

Michael Angelo found a piece of discarded Carrara marble among waste
rubbish beside a street in Florence, which some unskillful workman had
cut, hacked, spoiled, and thrown away. No doubt many artists had
noticed the fine quality of the marble, and regretted that it should
have been spoiled. But Michael Angelo still saw an angel in the ruin,
and with his chisel and mallet he called out from it one of the finest
pieces of statuary in Italy, the young David.

The lonely island of Nantucket would not be considered a very favorable
place to win success and fame. But Maria Mitchell, on seventy-five
dollars a year, as librarian of the Nantucket Athenaeum, found time and
opportunity to become a celebrated astronomer. Lucretia Mott, one of
America's foremost philanthropists and reformers, who made herself felt
over a whole continent, gained much of her reputation as a preacher on
Nantucket Island.

"Why does not America have fine sculptors?" asked a romping girl, of
Watertown, Mass., in 1842. Her father, a physician, answered that he
supposed "an American could be a stone-cutter, but that is a very
different thing from being a sculptor." "I think," said the plucky
maiden, "that if no other American tries it I will." She began her
studies in Boston, and walked seven miles to and fro daily between her
home and the city. The medical schools in Boston would not admit her
to study anatomy, so she had to go to St. Louis. Subsequently she went
to Rome, and there, during a long residence, and afterward, modeled and
carved very beautiful statuary which made the name of Harriet G. Hosmer
famous. Begin where you are; work where you are; the hour which you
are now wasting, dreaming of some far-off success, may be crowded with
grand possibilities.

Patrick Henry was called a lazy boy, a good-for-nothing farmer, and he
failed as a merchant. He was always dreaming of some far-off
greatness, and never thought he could be a hero among the corn and
tobacco and saddlebags of Virginia. He studied law six weeks, when he
put out