tries we must be content, at
best, with slower and less lofty promotion. But the lesson of
Garfield's life is not for America only, but for the whole world of
workers everywhere. The same qualities which procured his success
there will produce a different, but still a solid success, anywhere
else. As Garfield himself fittingly put it, with his usual keen
American common sense, "There is no more common thought among young
people than the foolish one, that by-and-by something will turn up by
which they will suddenly achieve fame or fortune. No, young gentlemen;
things don't turn up in this world unless somebody turns them up."

VII.

THOMAS EDWARD, SHOEMAKER.

It is the object of this volume to set forth the lives of working men
who through industry, perseverance, and high principle have raised
themselves by their own exertions from humble beginnings. Raised
themselves! Yes; but to what? Not merely, let us hope, to wealth and
position, not merely to worldly respect and high office, but to some
conspicuous field of real usefulness to their fellow men. Those whose
lives we have hitherto examined did so raise themselves by their own
strenuous energy and self-education. Either, like Garfield and
Franklin, they served the State zealously in peace or war; or else,
like Stephenson and Telford, they improved human life by their
inventions and engineering works; or, again, like Herschel and
Fraunhofer, they added to the wide field of scientific knowledge; or
finally, like Millet and Gibson, they beautified the world with their
noble and inspiring artistic productions. But in every one of these
cases, the men whose lives we have been here considering did actually
rise, sooner or later, from the class of labourers into some other
class socially and monetarily superior to it. Though they did great
good in other ways to others, they did still as a matter of fact
succeed themselves in quitting the rank in which they were born, and
rising to some other rank more or less completely above it.

Now, it will be clear to everybody that so long as our present social
arrangements exist, it must be impossible for the vast mass of
labouring men ever to do anything of the sort. It is to be desired,
indeed, that every labouring man should by industry and thrift secure
independence in the end for himself and his family; but however much
that may be the case, it will still rest certain that the vast mass of
men will necessaril