ed for
their literary ability; William Waldorf Astor and his cousin, John
Jacob, are authors of great merit. The Lees, of Virginia, have ever
been distinguished for energy, intellect, and a capacity for hard
work. And so we might cite a hundred examples to prove that even in
America, want is not the greatest incentive to effort.

The indefatigable industry of Lord Brougham has become almost
proverbial. His public labors extended over a period of upward of
sixty years, during which he ranged over many fields--of law,
literature, politics, and science--and achieved distinction in them
all. How he contrived it, has been to many a mystery. Once, when Sir
Samuel Romilly was requested to undertake some new work, he excused
himself by saying that he had no time; "but," he added, "go with it
to that fellow Brougham, he seems to have time for everything." The
secret of it was, that he never left a minute unemployed; withal he
possessed a constitution of iron. When arrived at an age at which
most men would have retired from the world to enjoy their hard-
earned leisure, perhaps to doze away their time in an easy chair,
Lord Brougham commenced and prosecuted a series of elaborate
investigations as to the laws of Light, and he submitted the results
to the most scientific audiences that Paris and London could muster.
About the same time, he was passing through the press his admirable
sketches of the "Men of Science and Literature of the Reign of
George III," and taking his full share of the law business and the
political discussions in the House of Lords. Sydney Smith once
recommended him to confine himself to only the transaction of so
much business as three strong men could get through. But such was
Brougham's love of work--long become a habit--that no amount of
application seems to have been too great for him; and such was his
love of excellence that it has been said of him that if his station
in life had been only that of a shoeblack, he would never have
rested satisfied until he had become the best shoeblack in England.

Chapter XII

SUCCESSFUL FARMING.

According to Holy Writ, man's first calling was agriculture, or,
perhaps, horticulture would better express it. Adam was placed in
the Garden to till and care for it; and even after he was driven
from that blissful abode and compelled to live by the sweat of his
brow, he had to go back to the earth from which his body was made to
sustain the life breathed into it by J