at, whose frail
structure will soon be racked to pieces. Others are born with large
bodies and very little mind, as if a toy engine were set to run a
mudscow. This means that the poor engineer must pole up stream all his
life. Others, by ignorance of parent, or accident through nurse, or
through their own blunder or sin, destroy their bodily capital. Soon
they are like boats cast high and dry upon the beach, doomed to
sun-cracking and decay. Then, in addition to these absolute
weaknesses, come the disproportions of the body, the distemperature of
various organs. It is not necessary for spoiling a timepiece to break
its every bearing; one loose screw stops all the wheels. Thus a very
slight error as to the management of the bodily mechanism is
sufficient to prevent fine creative work as author, speaker, or
inventor. Few men, perhaps, ever learn how to so manage their brain
and stomach as to be capable of high-pressure brain action for days at
a time--until the cumulative mental forces break through all obstacles
and conquer success. A great leader represents a kind of essence of
common sense, but rugged common sense is sanity of nerve and brain. He
who rules and leads must have mind and will, but he must have chest
and stomach also. Beecher says the gun carriage must be in proportion
to the gun it carries. When health goes the gun is spiked. Ideas are
arrows, and the body is the bow that sends them home. The mind aims;
the body fires.

Good health may be better than genius or wealth or honor. It was when
the gymnasium had made each Athenian youth an Apollo in health and
strength that the feet of the Greek race ran most nimbly along the
paths of art and literature and philosophy.

Another test of a man's value is an intellectual one. The largest
wastes of any nation are through ignorance. Failure is want of
knowledge; success is knowing how. Wealth is not in things of iron,
wood and stone. Wealth is in the brain that organizes the metal. Pig
iron is worth $20 a ton; made into horse shoes, $90; into knife
blades, $200; into watch springs, $1,000. That is, raw iron $20, brain
power, $980. Millet bought a yard of canvas for 1 franc, paid 2 more
francs for a hair brush and some colors; upon this canvas he spread
his genius, giving us "The Angelus." The original investment in raw
material was 60 cents; his intelligence gave that raw material a value
of $105,000. One of the pictures at the World's Fair represented a
savage s