It will not suffer us to be superficial."

Strong characters, like the palm tree, seem to thrive best when most
abused. Men who have stood up bravely under great misfortune for years
are often unable to bear prosperity. Their good fortune takes the spring
out of their energy, as the torrid zone enervates races accustomed to a
vigorous climate. Some people never come to themselves until baffled,
rebuffed, thwarted, defeated, crushed, in the opinion of those around
them. Trials unlock their virtues; defeat is the threshold of their
victory.

"Every man who makes a fortune has been more than once a bankrupt, if
the truth were known," said Albion Tourgee. "Grant's failure as a
subaltern made him commander-in-chief, and for myself, my failure to
accomplish what I set out to do led me to what I never had aspired to."

"What is defeat?" asked Wendell Phillips. "Nothing but education." And a
life's disaster may become the landmark from which there has begun a new
era, a broader life for man.

"To make his way at the bar," said an eminent jurist, "a young man must
live like a hermit and work like a horse. There is nothing that does a
young lawyer so much good as to be half starved."

We are the victors of our opponents. They have developed in us the very
power by which we overcome them. Without their opposition we could never
have braced and anchored and fortified ourselves, as the oak is braced
and anchored for its thousand battles with the tempests. Our trials, our
sorrows, and our griefs develop us in a similar way.

"Obstacles," says Mitchell, "are great incentives. I lived for whole
years upon Virgil and found myself well off." Poverty, Horace tells us,
drove him to poetry.

Nothing more unmans a man than to take away from him the spur of
necessity, which urges him onward and upward to the goal of his
ambition. Man is naturally lazy, and wealth induces indolence. The great
object of life is development, the unfolding and drawing out of our
powers, and whatever tempts us to a life of indolence or inaction, or to
seek pleasure merely, whatever furnishes us a crutch when we can develop
our muscles better by walking, all helps, guides, props, whatever tempts
to a life of inaction, in whatever guise it may come, is a curse. I
always pity the boy or girl with inherited wealth, for the temptation to
hide their talents in a napkin, undeveloped, is very, very great. It is
not natural for them to walk when they can ride, to go