the man of indomitable perseverance, a perseverance to which he owed
all his success, for it is well known that he was a very modest, and
by no means a brilliant man. The key to his character was
pertinacity: the secret of his success was perseverance.

"I will to-day thrash the Mexicans, or die a-trying!" was what Sam
Houston said to an aide, the morning of the battle of San Jacinto.
And he won.

The soldier who begins the battle in doubt is half beaten in advance.

The man who loses heart after one failure is a fool to make a
beginning.

There is a great deal in good preparation, but there is a great deal
more in heroic perseverance. The man who declines to make a beginning
till everything he thinks he may need is ready for his hand, is very
apt to make a failure. The greatest things have been achieved by the
simplest means. It is the ceaseless chopping that wears away the
stone. The plodder may be laughed at, and the brilliant man who
accomplishes great things at a leap admired; but we all remember the
fable of the tortoise and the hare; the latter, confident of her
powers, stopped to rest; the former, aware of his limitations,
persevered and toiled laboriously on--and he won the race.

We do not wish to be understood as underestimating genius. We believe
in it; but one of its strongest characteristics is perseverance, and
the next is its capacity to accomplish great results with the
simplest means.

"Easy come, easy go." Those things that are acquired without much
effort, are usually appreciated according to the effort expended.
Determination has a strong _will_; stubbornness has a strong _won't_.
The one is characterized by perseverance, and it builds up; the
other, having no purpose but blind self, ends in destruction.

It is a fact at once remarkable and encouraging that no man of great
genius who has left his mark on his times, ever believed that his
success was due to gifts that lifted him above his fellows. The means
by which he rose were within the reach of all, and perseverance was a
prime requisite.

The greatest results in life are usually attained by simple means,
and the exercise of ordinary qualities. The common life of everyday,
with its cares, necessities, and duties, affords ample opportunity
for acquiring experience of the best kind; and its most beaten paths
provide the true worker with abundant scope for effort and room for
self-improvement. The road of human welfare lies along the old