uman world gives a
man a place of real influence, and crowns him as truly great for what he
really is; and will not care a fig for any college certificate. If the
young man is determined to succeed in the world then a college is a
help. The trouble is not in the college, but in the man. He should
regard the college as a means to attain a result, not the result of
itself. The question the great busy world asks the claimant is: What can
he do? If the claimant enter school determined to succeed, even if he
sleeps but four to six hours out of the twenty-four, he will be
benefited. However, study like that of Webster, by New Hampshire pine
knots; and like Garfield's, by a wood-pile; generally proves valuable.
Blaine's life is thus beautifully described by his biographer:--

"James Gillespie Blaine, the subject of this biography, was born January
31st, 1830. His father, Ephraim L. Blaine, and his mother, Maria
Gillespie, still lived in their two-story house on the banks of the
Monongahela. No portentious events, either in nature or public affairs,
marked his advent. A few neighbors with generous interest and sympathy
extended their aid and congratulations. The tops of the hills and the
distant Alleghanies were white with snow, but the valley was bare and
brown, and the swollen river swept the busy ferry-boat from shore to
shore with marked emphasis, as old acquaintances repeated the news of
the day, 'Blaine has another son.'"

Another soul clothed in humanity; another cry; increased care in one
little home. That was all. It seems so sad in this, the day of his fame
and power, that the mother who, with such pain and misgiving, prayer and
noble resolutions, saw his face for the first time should now be
sleeping in the church-yard. In the path that now leads by her grave,
she had often paused before entering the shadowy gates of the
weather-beaten Catholic church, and calmed her anxious fears that she
might devoutly worship God and secure the answer to her prayer for her
child.

It seems strange now, in the light of other experiences, that no
tradition or record of a mother's prophecy concerning the future
greatness of her son comes down to us from that birthday, or from his
earliest years. But the old European customs and prejudices of her Irish
and Scottish ancestry seem to have lingered with sufficient force to
still give the place of social honor and to found the parent's hopes on
the first-born. To all concerned it was a