d inspire struggling merit.

"I was born in poverty," said Vice-President Henry Wilson. "Want sat
by my cradle. I know what it is to ask a mother for bread when she has
none to give. I left my home at ten years of age, and served an
apprenticeship of eleven years, receiving a month's schooling each
year, and, at the end of eleven years of hard work, a yoke of oxen and
six sheep, which brought me eighty-four dollars. I never spent the sum
of one dollar for pleasure, counting every penny from the time I was
born till I was twenty-one years of age. I know what it is to travel
weary miles and ask my fellow men to give me leave to toil. . . . In
the first month after I was twenty-one years of age, I went into the
woods, drove a team, and cut mill-logs. I rose in the morning before
daylight and worked hard till after dark, and received the magnificent
sum of six dollars for the month's work! Each of these dollars looked
as large to me as the moon looks to-night."

Mr. Wilson determined never to lose an opportunity for self-culture or
self-advancement. Few men knew so well the value of spare moments.
_He seized them as though they were gold_ and would not let one pass
until he had wrung from it every possibility. He managed to read a
thousand good books before he was twenty-one--what a lesson for boys on
a farm! When he left the farm he started on foot for Natick, Mass.,
over one hundred miles distant, to learn the cobbler's trade. He went
through Boston that he might see Bunker Hill monument and other
historical landmarks. The whole trip cost him but one dollar and six
cents. In a year he was the head of a debating club at Natick. Before
eight years had passed, he made his great speech against slavery, in
the Massachusetts Legislature. Twelve years later he stood shoulder to
shoulder with the polished Sumner in Congress. With him, _every
occasion was a great occasion_. He ground every circumstance of his
life into material for success.

"Don't go about the town any longer in that outlandish rig. Let me
give you an order on the store. Dress up a little, Horace." Horace
Greeley looked down on his clothes as if he had never before noticed
how seedy they were, and replied: "You see Mr. Sterrett, my father is
on a new place, and I want to help him all I can." He had spent but
six dollars for personal expenses in seven months, and was to receive
one hundred and thirty-five from Judge J. M. Sterret of the Eri