down before him in succession. He
was told that the Alps stood in the way of his armies. "There shall
be no Alps," he said, and the road across the Simplon was
constructed, through a district formerly almost inaccessible.
"Impossible," said he, "is a word only to be found in the dictionary
of fools." He was a man who toiled terribly; sometimes employing and
exhausting four secretaries at a time. He spared no one, not even
himself. His influence inspired other men, and put a new life into
them. "I made my generals out of mud" he said. But all was of no
avail; for Napoleon's intense selfishness was his ruin, and the ruin
of France, which he left a prey to anarchy.

Before the man resolutely impelled to action by singleness of
purpose, every obstacle disappears as he approaches, and every lesson
of experience becomes the stepping-stone to further victories in the
same direction.

It is this singleness of purpose, this absorption in a great life-
work, that nerves our missionaries in their exile. A splendid example
of this is presented in the career of the great missionary and
explorer, Dr. Livingstone.

He has told the story of his life in that modest and unassuming
manner which is so characteristic of the man himself. His ancestors
were poor but honest Highlanders, and it is related of one of them,
renowned in his district for wisdom and prudence, that when on his
death-bed, he called his children round him and left them these
words, the only legacy he had to bequeath: "In my lifetime," said he,
"I have searched most carefully through all the traditions I could
find of our family, and I never could discover that there was a
dishonest man among our forefathers; if, therefore, any of you, or
any of your children, should take to dishonest ways, it will not be
because it runs in our blood; it does not belong to you: I leave this
precept with you--Be honest." At the age of ten, Livingstone was sent
to work in a cotton factory near Glasgow as a "piecer." With part of
his first week's wages he bought a Latin grammar, and began to learn
that language, pursuing the study for years at a night-school. He
would sit up conning his lessons till twelve or later, when not sent
to bed by his mother, for he had to be up and at work in the factory
every morning by six. In this way he plodded through Virgil and
Horace, also reading extensively all books, excepting novels, that
came in his way, but more especially scientific works and bo