asleep, recruiting for the next day's labor and preparing for a large
harvest later. Like all successful men, he made finance a study. When he
entered the railroad business, it was estimated that his fortune was
thirty-five or forty million dollars.

"The spruce young spark," says Sizer, "who thinks chiefly of his
mustache and boots and shiny hat, of getting along nicely and easily
during the day, and talking about the theatre, the opera, or a fast
horse, ridiculing the faithful young fellow who came to learn the
business and make a man of himself, because he will not join in wasting
his time in dissipation, will see the day, if his useless life is not
earlier blasted by vicious indulgences, when he will be glad to accept a
situation from his fellow-clerk whom he now ridicules and affects to
despise, when the latter shall stand in the firm, dispensing benefits
and acquiring fortune."

"When a man has done his work," says Ruskin, "and nothing can any way be
materially altered in his fate, let him forget his toil, and jest with
his fate if he will; but what excuse can you find for willfulness of
thought at the very time when every crisis of fortune hangs on your
decisions? A youth thoughtless, when all the happiness of his home
forever depends on the chances or the passions of the hour! A youth
thoughtless, when the career of all his days depends on the opportunity
of a moment! A youth thoughtless, when his every action is a
foundation-stone of future conduct, and every imagination a foundation
of life or death! Be thoughtless in any after years, rather than
now--though, indeed, there is only one place where a man may be nobly
thoughtless, his deathbed. Nothing should ever be left to be done
there."

"On to Berlin," was the shout of the French army in July, 1870; but, to
the astonishment of the world, the French forces were cut in two and
rolled as by a tidal wave into Metz and around Sedan. Soon two French
armies and the Emperor surrendered, and German troopers paraded the
streets of captured Paris.

But as men thought it out, as Professor Wells tells us, they came to see
that it was not France that was beaten, but only Louis Napoleon and a
lot of nobles, influential only because they bore titles or were
favorites. Louis Napoleon, the feeble bearer of a great name, was
emperor because of that name and criminal daring. By a series of happy
accidents he had gained credit in the Crimean War, and at Magenta and
Solferin