aying the slightest
attention to the visitor. Finally, after about twenty minutes of the
most impassioned abuse ever poured out in an editor's office, the angry
man became disgusted, and abruptly turned to walk out of the room.
Then, for the first time, Mr. Greeley quickly looked up, rose from his
chair, and slapping the gentleman familiarly on his shoulder, in a
pleasant tone of voice said: "Don't go, friend; sit down, sit down, and
free your mind; it will do you good,--you will feel better for it.
Besides, it helps me to think what I am to write about. Don't go."

One unwavering aim has ever characterized successful men.

"Daniel Webster," said Sydney Smith, "struck me much like a
steam-engine in trousers."

As Adams suggests, Lord Brougham, like Canning, had too many talents;
and, though as a lawyer he gained the most splendid prize of his
profession, the Lord Chancellorship of England, and merited the
applause of scientific men for his investigations in science, yet his
life on the whole was a failure. He was "everything by turns and
nothing long." With all his magnificent abilities he left no permanent
mark on history or literature, and actually outlived his own fame.

Miss Martineau says, "Lord Brougham was at his chateau at Cannes when
the daguerreotype process first came into vogue. An artist undertook
to take a view of the chateau with a group of guests on the balcony.
His Lordship was, asked to keep perfectly still for five seconds, and
he promised that he would not stir, but alas,--he moved. The
consequence was that there was a blur where Lord Brougham should have
been.

"There is something," continued Miss Martineau, "very typical in this.
In the picture of our century, as taken from the life by history, this
very man should have been the central figure. But, owing to his want
of steadfastness, there will be forever a blur where Lord Brougham
should have been. How many lives are blurs for want of concentration
and steadfastness of purpose!"

Fowell Buxton attributed his success to ordinary means and
extraordinary application, and being a whole man to one thing at a
time. It is ever the unwavering pursuit of a single aim that wins.
"_Non multa, sed multum_"--not many things, but much, was Coke's motto.

It is the almost invisible point of a needle, the keen, slender edge of
a razor or an ax, that opens the way for the bulk that follows.
Without point or edge the bulk would be useless. It is