crushed down out of sight by embittering
experience; but if it were an organ the post-mortem would find it still
in his corpse. The man born ambitious of power and glory may live long
without finding it out, but when the opportunity comes he will know,
will strike for the largest thing within the limit of his chances at the
time-constable, perhaps--and will be glad and proud when he gets it,
and will write home about it. But he will not stop with that start; his
appetite will come again; and by-and-by again, and yet again; and when
he has climbed to police commissioner it will at last begin to dawn upon
him that what his Napoleon soul wants and was born for is something away
higher up--he does not quite know what, but Circumstance and Opportunity
will indicate the direction and he will cut a road through and find out.

I think Mrs. Eddy was born with a far-seeing business-eye, but did not
know it; and with a great organizing and executive talent, and did not
know it; and with a large appetite for power and distinction, and did
not know it. I think the reason that her make did not show up until
middle life was that she had General Grant's luck--Circumstance and
Opportunity did not come her way when she was younger. The qualities
that were born in her had to wait for circumstance and opportunity--but
they were there: they were there to stay, whether they ever got a chance
to fructify or not. If they had come early, they would have found her
ready and competent. And they--not she--would have determined what they
would set her at and what they would make of her. If they had elected to
commission her as second-assistant cook in a bankrupt boarding-house,
I know the rest of it--I know what would have happened. She would have
owned the boarding-house within six months; she would have had the late
proprietor on salary and humping himself, as the worldly say; she would
have had that boarding-house spewing money like a mint; she would have
worked the servants and the late landlord up to the limit; she would
have squeezed the boarders till they wailed, and by some mysterious
quality born in her she would have kept the affections of certain of the
lot whose love and esteem she valued, and flung the others down the back
area; in two years she would own all the boarding-houses in the town, in
five all the boarding-houses in the State, in twenty all the hotels in
America, in forty all the hotels on the planet, and would sit at home
wi