dore Barclay, a veteran of European navies, with six
vessels, carrying sixty-three guns. Perry had no experience in naval
battles before this.

To believe a business impossible is the way to make it so. Feasible
projects often miscarry through despondency, and are strangled at birth
by a cowardly imagination. A ship on a lee shore stands out to sea to
escape shipwreck. Shrink and you will be despised.

One of Napoleon's drummer boys won the battle of Arcola. Napoleon's
little army of fourteen thousand men had fought fifty thousand Austrians
for seventy-two hours; the Austrians' position enabled them to sweep the
bridge of Arcola, which the French had gained and which they must hold
to win the battle. The drummer boy, on the shoulders of his sergeant
(who swam across the river with him), beat the drum all the way across
the river, and when on the opposite end of the bridge he beat his drum
so vigorously that the Austrians, remembering the terrible French
onslaught of the day before, fled in terror, thinking the French army
was advancing upon them. Napoleon dated his great confidence in himself
from this drum. This boy's heroic act was represented in stone on the
front of the Pantheon of Paris.

Two days before the battle of Jena Napoleon said: "My lads, you must not
fear death: when soldiers brave death they drive him into the enemy's
ranks."

Arago says, in his autobiography, that when he was puzzled and
discouraged with difficulties he met with in his early studies in
mathematics some words he found on the waste leaf of his text-book
caught his attention and interested him. He found it to be a short
letter from D'Alembert to a young person, disheartened like himself, and
read: "Go on, sir, go on. The difficulties you meet with will resolve
themselves as you advance. Proceed and light will dawn and shine with
increasing clearness on your path." "That maxim," he said, "was my
greatest master in mathematics."

Overtaken near a rocky coast by a sudden storm of great violence, the
captain of a French brig gave orders to put out to sea; but in spite of
all the efforts of the crew they could not steer clear of the rocks, and
alter struggling for a whole day they felt a violent shock, accompanied
by a horrible crash. The boats were lowered, but only to be swept away
by the waves. As a last resort the captain proposed that some sailors
should swim ashore with a rope, but not a man would volunteer.

"Captain," said the li