ck and energy can do.

When it was proposed to unite England and America by steam, Dr. Lardner
delivered a lecture before the Royal Society "proving" that steamers
could never cross the Atlantic, because they could not carry coal
enough to produce steam during the whole voyage. The passage of the
steamship Sirius, which crossed in nineteen days, was fatal to
Lardner's theory. When it was proposed to build a vessel of iron, many
persons said: "Iron sinks--only wood can float:" but experiments proved
that the miracle of the prophet in making iron "swim" could be
repeated, and now not only ships of war, but merchant vessels, are
built of iron or steel. A will found a way to make iron float.

Mr. Ingram, publisher of the "London Illustrated News," who lost his
life on Lake Michigan, walked ten miles to deliver a single paper
rather than disappoint a customer, when he began life as a newsdealer
at Nottingham, England. Does any one wonder that such a youth
succeeded? Once he rose at two o'clock in the morning and walked to
London to get some papers because there was no post to bring them. He
determined that his customers should not be disappointed. This is the
kind of will that finds a way.

There is scarcely anything in all biography grander than the saying of
young Henry Fawcett, Gladstone's last Postmaster-General, to his
grief-stricken father, who had put out both his eyes by bird-shot
during a game hunt: "Never mind, father, blindness shall not interfere
with my success in life." One of the most pathetic sights in London
streets, long afterward, was Henry Fawcett, M. P., led everywhere by a
faithful daughter, who acted as amanuensis as well as guide to her
plucky father. Think of a young man, scarcely on the threshold of
active life, suddenly losing the sight of both eyes and yet, by mere
pluck and almost incomprehensible tenacity of purpose, lifting himself
into eminence, in any direction, to say nothing of becoming one of the
foremost men in a country noted for its great men. Most youth would
have succumbed to such a misfortune, and would never have been heard
from again. But fortunately for the world, there are yet left many
Fawcetts, many Prescotts, Parkmans, Cavanaghs.

The courageous daughter who was eyes to her father was herself a
marvelous example of pluck and determination. For the first time in
the history of Oxford College, which reaches back centuries, she
succeeded in winning the post which