Virgil spent several years on the Georgics, which could be printed in two columns of an ordinary newspaper. "Generally speaking," said Sydney Smith, "the life of all truly great men has been a life of intense and incessant labor. They have commonly passed the first half of life in the gross darkness of indigent humility, overlooked, mistaken, con demned by weaker men,-thinking while others slept, reading while others rioted, feeling something within them that told them they should not always be kept down among the dregs of the world. And then, when their time has come, and some little accident has given them their first occasion, they have burst out into the light and glory of public life, rich with the spoils of time, and mighty in all the labors and struggles of the mind.” Malibran said: "If I neglect my practice a day, I see the difference in my execution; if for two days, my friends see it; and if for a week, all the world knows my failure." Constant, persistent struggle she found to be the price of her marvelous power. "If I am building a mountain," said Confucius, "and stop before the last basketful of earth is placed on the summit, I have failed." "Young gentlemen," said Francis Wayland, "remember that nothing can stand day's work." America will never produce any great art until our resources are developed and we get more time. As a people we have not yet learned the art of patience. We do not know how to wait. Think of an American artist spending seven, eight, ten, and even twelve years on a single painting as did Titian, Michael Angelo and many of the other old masters. Think of an American sculptor spending years and years upon a single masterpiece, as did the Greeks and Romans. We have not yet learned the secret of working and waiting. The single element in all the progressive movements of my pencil," said the great David Wilkie, was persevering industry." The kind of ability which most men rank highest is that which enables its possessor to do what he undertakes, and attain the object of his ambition or desire. 'The reader of a newspaper does not see the first insertion of an ordinary advertisement," says a French writer. "The second insertion he sees, but does not read; the third insertion he reads; the fourth insertion he looks at the price; the fifth insertion he speaks of it to his wife; the sixth insertion he is ready to purchase, and the seventh insertion he purchases.' The large fees which make us envy the great lawyer or doctor are not remuneration for the few minutes' labor of giving advice, but for the mental stores gathered during the precious spare moments of many a year while others were sleeping or enjoying holidays. A client will frequently object to paying fifty dollars for an opinion written in five minutes, but such an opinion could be written only by one who has read a hundred law books. If the lawyer had not previously read those books, but should keep a client waiting until he could read them with care, there would be fewer complaints that fees of this kind are not earned. We are told that perseverance built the pyramids on Egypt's plains, erected the gorgeous temple at Jerusalem, inclosed in adamant the Chinese Empire, scaled the stormy, cloud-capped Alps, opened a highway through the watery wilderness of the Atlantic, leveled the forests of the new world, and reared in its stead a community of States and nations. Perseverance has wrought from the marble block the exquisite creations of genius, painted on canvas the gorgeous mimicry of nature, and engraved on a metallic surface the viewless substance of the shadow. Perseverance has put in motion millions of spindles, winged as many flying shuttles, harnessed thousands of iron steeds to as many freighted cars, and sent them flying from town to town and nation to nation; tunneled mountains of granite, and annihilated space with the lightning's speed. Perseverance has whitened the waters of the world with the sails of a hundred nations, navigated every sea and explored every land. Perseverance has reduced nature in her thousand forms to as many sciences, taught her laws, prophesied her future movements, measured her untrodden spaces, counted her myriad hosts of worlds, and computed their distances, dimensions, and velocities. 66 Whoever is resolved to excel in painting, or, indeed, in any other art," said Reynolds, "must bring all his mind to bear upon that one object from the moment that he rises till he goes to bed." "If you work hard two weeks without selling a book," wrote a publisher to an agent, "you will make a success of it." Know thy work and do it," said Carlyle; "and work at it like a Hercules. One monster there is in the world-an idle man." CHAPTER XVIII. SAVE. If you want to test a young man and ascertain whether nature made him for a king or a subject, give him a thousand dollars and see what he will do with it. If he is born to conquer and command, he will put it quietly away till he is ready to use it as opportunity offers. If he is born to serve, he will immediately begin to spend it in gratifying his ruling propensity.-PARTON. The man who builds, and lacks wherewith to pay, Provides a home from which to run away. -YOUNG. Buy what thou hast no need of, and ere long thou shalt sell thy necessaries. For age and want save while you may: -FRANKLIN. Whatever be your talents, whatever be your prospects, never speculate away on a chance of a palace that which you may need as a provision against the workhouse.-BULWER. "What do you do with all these books?" "Oh, that library is my 'one cigar a day, was the response. What do you mean?" Mean! Just this: when you bothered me so about being a man, and learning to smoke, I'd just been reading about a young fellow who bought books with money that others would have spent in smoke, and I |