or industry.

Responsibility alone drives man to toil and brings out his best gifts.
For this reason the pensions given to scholars are said to have
injured some men of genius. Johnson wrote his immortal Rasselas to
raise money to buy his mother's coffin. Hunger and pain drove Lee to
the invention of his loom. Left a widow with a family to support, in
mid-life Mrs. Trollope took to authorship and wrote a score of
volumes. The most piteous tragedy in English literature is that of
Coleridge. Wordsworth called him the most myriad-minded man since
Shakespeare, and Lamb thought him "an archangel slightly damaged." The
generosity of his friends gave the poet a home and all its comforts
without the necessity of toil. Is it possible that ease and lack of
responsibility, with opium, helped wreck him? What did that critic
mean when he said of a rich young friend, "He needs poverty alone to
make him a great painter?" It is responsibility that teaches caution,
foresight, prudence, courage, and turns feeblings into giants.

The extremes and contrasts of life do much to shape character. Ours is
a world that moves from light to dark, from heat to cold, from summer
to winter. On the crest to-day, the hero is in the trough to-morrow.
Moses, yesterday a deserted slave child, to-day adopted by a king's
daughter; David, but yesterday a shepherd boy with his harp, and
to-day dwelling in the King's palace; men yesterday possessed of
plenty, to-day passing into penury--these illustrate the extremes of
life. These contrasts are as striking as those we find on the sunny
slopes of the Alps. There the foothills are covered with vineyards,
while the summits have everlasting snow. In Wyoming hot springs gush
close beside snowdrifts. During man's few years, and brief, he
experiences many reverses. He flits on between light and dark. It is
hard for the leader to drop back into the ranks. It is not easy for
him who hath led a movement to its success to see his laurels fall
leaf by leaf. After a long and dangerous service men grown old and
gray are succeeded by the youth to whom society owes no debt. Thus man
journeys from strength to invalidism, from prosperity to adversity,
from joy to sorrow, or goes from misery to happiness, from defeat to
victory.

Not one single person but sooner or later is tested by these
alterations. God sends prosperity to lift character to its highest
levels. It is an error to suppose that the higher manhood flourishes
i