en who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor--men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue
And scorn his treacherous flatteries without winking;
Tall men sun-crowned, who live above the fog
In public duty, and in private thinking.
ANON.

CHAPTER III

BOYS WITH NO CHANCE

In the blackest soils grow the fairest flowers, and the loftiest and
strongest trees spring heavenward among the rocks.--J. G. HOLLAND.

Poverty is very terrible, and sometimes kills the very soul within us,
but it is the north wind that lashes men into Vikings; it is the soft,
luscious south wind which lulls them to lotus dreams.--OUIDA.

Poverty is the sixth sense.--GERMAN PROVERB.

It is not every calamity that is a curse, and early adversity is often
a blessing. Surmounted difficulties not only teach, but hearten us in
our future struggles.--SHARPE.

There can be no doubt that the captains of industry to-day, using that
term in its broadest sense, are men who began life as poor boys.--SETH
LOW.

'Tis a common proof,
That lowliness is young ambition's ladder!
SHAKESPEARE.

"I am a child of the court," said a pretty little girl at a children's
party in Denmark; "_my_ father is Groom of the Chambers, which is a
very high office. And those whose names end with 'sen,'" she added,
"can never be anything at all. We must put our arms akimbo, and make
the elbows quite pointed, so as to keep these 'sen' people at a great
distance."

"But my papa can buy a hundred dollars' worth of bonbons, and give them
away to children," angrily exclaimed the daughter of the rich merchant
Peter_sen_. "Can your papa do that?"

"Yes," chimed in the daughter of an editor, "my papa can put your papa
and everybody's papa into the newspaper. All sorts of people are
afraid of him, my papa says, for he can do as he likes with the paper."

"Oh, if I could be one of them!" thought a little boy peeping through
the crack of the door, by permission of the cook for whom he had been
turning the spit. But no, _his_ parents had not even a penny to spare,
and his name ended in "sen."

Years afterwards when the children of the party had become men and
women, some of them went to see a splendid house, filled with all kinds
of beautiful and valuable objects. There they met the owner, once the
very boy who thought it so great a privilege to peep at them through a
crack in the door as they played. He had become t