the door of that house
it was to me a revelation; if there is anything else like it in this
country or city, I do not know where it is. It seemed to me I was in
fairyland. Here was a large house and yet so filled that it seemed
small, from the top of the very attic down to the first story, with
articles of vertu and bric-a-brac, with tapestry that had come from
all parts of the globe, with ivories, carved in Japan as nowhere else,
with mosaics from all sections of the world, with beautiful chairs,
with embroidery that had graced the homes of monarchs in the old
country, and on his back porch, and in his yard, were beautiful
flowers hardly seen outside of the tropics.

I need not say to you how surprised I was; I had only known him as a
mechanic, a member of this Society. I spent an hour and a half there I
shall never forget; I asked the privilege of bringing my better half.

But the thought that I wanted to impress was this; in a beautiful
case, surrounded with plate glass, was a full dinner set of the finest
Sevres china. He explained to me that the set was ordered and made
expressly for the second Napoleon when he was in the height of his
glory. I said to him, "Where did you get this? I did not know a full
set of that kind ever got away from royalty." He said it did once
in a while and this was the only one in this country. He had been
explaining to me things I never knew about, and he came back to his
own self and said, "Billy, you know when the great Napoleon and his
court were sipping their soup out of these dishes, I was wielding a
paint brush at $1.50 a day and glad to get it." As I lay trying to go
to sleep last night that single sentence came to me and it seemed
there was a volume in it. It is an American idea that there is no
success which is not attainable by almost any person if we only take
those opportunities afforded us. I want to say one word to the ladies,
and I believe I said something of the same kind to the boys. I often
see it in the papers, I hear it in speeches at trade societies and all
that sort of thing, that there is a great change in America; there is
no longer any chance to rise; and that we are divided into classes,
and that the rich are going to get richer and the poor going to stay
where they are.

I hope every American will disabuse his mind of anything like that;
there never was a time when opportunities were greater than now. We
have got to believe in ourselves and watch the opportu