ng the Christian
religion throughout his dominions for a fortnight.

The triumphs of tact, or common sense, over talent and genius, are seen
everywhere. Walpole was an ignorant man, and Charlemagne could hardly
write his name so that it could be deciphered; but these giants knew
men and things, and possessed that practical wisdom and tact which have
ever moved the world.

Tact, like Alexander, cuts the knots it cannot untie, and leads its
forces to glorious victory. A practical man not only sees, but seizes
the opportunity. There is a certain getting-on quality difficult to
describe, but which is the great winner of the prizes of life.
Napoleon could do anything in the art of war with his own hands, even
to the making of gunpowder. Paul was all things to all men, that he
might save some. The palm is among the hardest and least yielding of
all woods, yet rather than be deprived of the rays of the life-giving
sun in the dense forests of South America, it is said to turn into a
creeper, and climb the nearest trunk to the light.

A farmer who could not get a living sold one half of his farm to a
young man who made enough money on the half to pay for it and buy the
rest. "You have not tact," was his reply, when the old man asked how
one could succeed so well where the other had failed.

According to an old custom a Cape Cod minister was called upon in April
to make a prayer over a piece of land. "No," said he, when shown the
land, "this does not need a prayer; it needs manure."

To see a man as he is you must turn him round and round until you get
him at the right angle. Place him in a good light, as you would a
picture. The excellences and defects will appear if you get the right
angle. How our old schoolmates have changed places in the ranking of
actual life! The boy who led his class and was the envy of all has
been distanced by the poor dunce who was called slow and stupid, but
who had a sort of dull energy in him which enabled him to get on in the
world. The class leader had only a theoretical knowledge, and could
not cope with the stern realities of the age. Even genius, however
rapid its flight, must not omit a single essential detail, and must be
willing to work like a horse.

Shakespeare had marvelous tact; he worked everything into his plays.
He ground up the king and his vassal, the fool and the fop, the prince
and the peasant, the black and the white, the pure and the impure, the
simple and th