a
forceful will of a frail woman, set toward the beautiful and good, can
do within the severest limitations. Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, Bryn Mawr,
and the thirty-five other colleges for women in Western and Southern
states are the children of Mount Holyoke. One lone woman, one single
will, a large heart! God sees her and orders His forces to aid her!

Richard Arkwright, Stephenson, and Edison in the pursuit of an
invention, with stern faces and clenched teeth, work far into the
morning. John Wesley, Whitfield, and the list of religious reformers
from St. Augustine to Dwight L. Moody have been men of dynamic
confidence in the triumph of a great idea. Neal Dow, Elizabeth Fry, and
their disciples, urging on the cause of temperance with that motive
force which they discovered in themselves, aroused the people wherever
they went to assistance or to opposition. Fulton said, "I will build a
steamboat." Cyrus Field said, "I will lay a telegraph cable to Europe."
Sir Christopher Wren, imitating the builders of St. Peter's, said, "I
will build the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral." General Washington said,
"I will venture all on final victory," and General Grant said, "I will
fight it out on this line." When Abraham Lincoln gave his eloquent
tribute to Henry Clay in 1852 he said, "Henry Clay's example teaches us
that one can scarcely be so poor but that, if he will, he can acquire
sufficient education to get through the world respectably." To such men
log cabins were universities. Daniel Webster decided, at the end of his
day's work plowing a stony field in the New Hampshire hills, that he
would be a statesman. Thomas H. Benton, when nearly all men supposed the
wilderness unconquerable, decided to push the Republic west to the Rocky
Mountains. Salmon P. Chase, from the time he ran the ferryboat on the
Cuyahoga River, kept in his pocket-book a motto, "Where there is a will
there is a way." Charles Sumner had a disagreeable habit of talking
about himself and boasting of his learning. He was frankly told one day
by James T. Fields that it was a "weakening trait." Mr. Sumner thanked
Mr. Fields and told him that he had determined "to discontinue such
foolish talk." "He fought himself," wrote Mr. Fields, "and he
conquered." James G. Blaine, in college at Washington, Pennsylvania, saw
a student who had been too devoted to football weeping over his failure
to pass an examination. Warned by the failure of this student, James
told his mother th