lare themselves in the battle
of life. Some people pause for the rap of opportunity when opportunity
has been playing a tattoo on their resonant skulls for years.

Hardly a single great invention has been placed on the market without a
number of men putting forth the claim that they had the idea first--and
in most cases they proved the fact. But while they were sitting down and
dreaming, or trying to bring the device to a greater perfection, a man
with initiative rose up and acted. The telegraph, telephone,
sewing-machine, air-brake, mowing-machine, wireless, and
linotype-machine are only a few illustrations.

The most wonderful idea is quite valueless until it is put into
practical operation. The Government rewards the man who first gets a
patent or first puts his invention into practical use--and the world
does likewise. Thus the dreamer must always lag behind the door.

True will power also predicates concentration. I shall never forget the
time I went to see President Lincoln to ask him to spare the life of one
of my soldiers who was sentenced to be shot. As I walked toward the door
of his office I felt a greater fear than I had ever known when the
shells were bursting all about us at Antietam. Finally I mustered up
courage to knock on the door. I heard a voice inside yell:

"Come in and sit down!"

The man at the table did not look up as I entered; he was busy over a
bunch of papers. I sat down at the edge of a chair and wished I were in
Peking or Patagonia. He never looked up until he had quite finished with
the papers. Then he turned to me and said:

"I am a very busy man and have only a few minutes to spare. Tell me in
the fewest words what it is you want."

As soon as I mentioned the case he said:

"I have heard all about it, and you do not need to tell me any more. Mr.
Stanton was talking to me about that only a few days ago. You can go to
the hotel and rest assured that the President never did sign an order to
shoot a boy under twenty, and never will. You may tell his mother that."
Then, after a short conversation, he took hold of another bunch of
papers and said, decidedly, "Good morning!"

Lincoln, one of the greatest men of the world, owed his success largely
to one rule: whatsoever he had to do at all he put his whole mind into,
and held it all there until the task was all done. That makes men great
almost anywhere.

Too many people are satisfied if they have done a thing "well enough."
That i