gentle
patience, an invincible, aggressive persistency, a contagious optimism
that will carry him over every obstacle to ultimate victory. It is
essential that he possess fertility of resource to adapt himself to
circumstances, that he have power to call out action and executive
ability to direct it. Most important of all is a magnetic personality
such as belonged to the great chieftains of history who in war or
peace have been able to attract followers and to mould them in
obedience to their own will.

176. =Broad Opportunities.=--A leader such as that described has an
almost unlimited field of opportunity to mould social life. In the
city the opportunity for leadership may seem to be larger, but few can
dominate more than a small group. In the country the start may be
slower and more discouraging, but the goal reaches out ahead. From
better agriculture the leader may draw on the people to better social
ideals, to a new appreciation of education and broad culture, to a
truer understanding of ethics and religion. He may refashion
institutions that may express the new in modern terms. But when this
is accomplished his work is not done. He may reach out over the
countryside and make his village a nucleus for wider progress through
a whole county. Even then his influence is not spent. The rural
communities in America are feeders of the cities; in them is the
nursery of the men and women who are to become leaders in the larger
circles of business and professional life, in journalism and
literature, in religion and social reform. Many a rural teacher or
pastor has built himself into the affections of a boy or a girl,
incarnating for them the noblest ideals and stimulating them to
achievement and service in an environment that he himself could never
hope to fill and with a power of influence that he could never expect
to wield. The avenues of opportunity are becoming more numerous. The
teacher and the minister have advantages of leadership over the county
Young Men's Christian Association secretary and the village nurse, but
since personal qualities are the determining factors, no man or woman,
whatever their position, can make good the claim without proving
ability by actual achievement. Any man or woman who enters a
particular community for the first time, or returns to it from
college, may become a dynamo of blessing to it. There waits for such a
leader the loyalty of the boys who may be won for noble manhood, of
the gi