t Beecher
Stowe, Frances Willard, and thousands of others had. But to succeed
you must be prepared to seize and improve the opportunity when it
comes. Remember that four things come not back: the spoken word, the
sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.

It is one of the paradoxes of civilization that the more opportunities
are utilized, the more new ones are thereby created. New openings are
as easy to find as ever to those who do their best; although it is not
so easy as formerly to obtain great distinction in the old lines,
because the standard has advanced so much, and competition has so
greatly increased. "The world is no longer clay," said Emerson, "but
rather iron in the hands of its workers, and men have got to hammer out
a place for themselves by steady and rugged blows."

Thousands of men have made fortunes out of trifles which others pass
by. As the bee gets honey from the same flower from which the spider
gets poison, so some men will get a fortune out of the commonest and
meanest things, as scraps of leather, cotton waste, slag, iron filings,
from which others get only poverty and failure. There is scarcely a
thing which contributes to the welfare and comfort of humanity,
scarcely an article of household furniture, a kitchen utensil, an
article of clothing or of food, that is not capable of an improvement
in which there may be a fortune.

Opportunities? They are all around us. Forces of nature plead to be
used in the service of man, as lightning for ages tried to attract his
attention to the great force of electricity, which would do his
drudgery and leave him to develop the God-given powers within him.
There is power lying latent everywhere waiting for the observant eye to
discover it.

First find out what the world needs and then supply the want. An
invention to make smoke go the wrong way in a chimney might be a very
ingenious thing, but it would be of no use to humanity. The patent
office at Washington is full of wonderful devices of ingenious
mechanism, but not one in hundreds is of use to the inventor or to the
world. And yet how many families have been impoverished, and have
struggled for years amid want and woe, while the father has been
working on useless inventions. A. T. Stewart, as a boy, lost
eighty-seven cents, when his capital was one dollar and a half, in
buying buttons and thread which shoppers did not call for. After that
he made it a rule never to buy an