their progress checked
by the Red Sea, and their leader paused for Divine help, the Lord said,
"Wherefore criest thou unto me? Speak unto the children of Israel,
_that they go forward_."

With the world full of work that needs to be done; with human nature so
constituted that often a pleasant word or a trifling assistance may
stem the tide of disaster for some fellow man, or clear his path to
success; with our own faculties so arranged that in honest, earnest,
persistent endeavor we find our highest good; and with countless noble
examples to encourage us to dare and to do, each moment brings us to
the threshold of some new opportunity.

Don't _wait_ for your opportunity. _Make it_,--make it as the
shepherd-boy Ferguson made his when he calculated the distances of the
stars with a handful of glass beads on a string. Make it as George
Stephenson made his when he mastered the rules of mathematics with a
bit of chalk on the grimy sides of the coal wagons in the mines. Make
it, as Napoleon made his in a hundred "impossible" situations. Make
it, as _all leaders of men_, in war and in peace, have made their
chances of success. Golden opportunities are nothing to laziness, but
industry makes the commonest chances golden.

"There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures."

"'Tis never offered twice; seize, then, the hour
When fortune smiles, and duty points the way;
Nor shrink aside to 'scape the specter fear,
Nor pause, though pleasure beckon from her bower;
But bravely bear thee onward to the goal."

CHAPTER II

WANTED--A MAN

"Wanted; men:
Not systems fit and wise,
Not faiths with rigid eyes,
Not wealth in mountain piles,
Not power with gracious smiles,
Not even the potent pen;
Wanted; men."

All the world cries, Where is the man who will save us? We want a man!
Don't look so far for this man. You have him at hand. This man,--it
is you, it is I, it is each one of us! . . . How to constitute one's
self a man? Nothing harder, if one knows not how to will it; nothing
easier, if one wills it.--ALEXANDRE DUMAS.

Diogenes sought with a lantern at noontide in ancient Athens for a
perfectly honest man, and sought in vain. In the market place he once
cried aloud, "Hear me, O men";