ing
powder which disturbs its peace of centuries: it is not pleasant to be
rent with powder, to be hammered and squared by the quarryman. But
look again: behold the magnificent statue, the monument, chiseled into
grace and beauty, telling its grand story of valor in the public square
for centuries.

The statue would have slept in the marble forever but for the blasting,
the chiseling, and the polishing. The angel of our higher and nobler
selves would remain forever unknown in the rough quarries of our lives
but for the blastings of affliction, the chiseling of obstacles, and
the sand-papering of a thousand annoyances.

Who has not observed the patience, the calm endurance, the sweet
loveliness chiseled out of some rough life by the reversal of fortune
or by some terrible affliction.

How many business men have made their greatest strides toward manhood,
have developed their greatest virtues, when the reverses of fortune
have swept away everything they had in the world; when disease had
robbed them of all they held dear in life. Often we cannot see the
angel in the quarry of our lives, the statue of manhood, until the
blasts of misfortune have rent the ledge, and difficulties and
obstacles have squared and chiseled the granite blocks into grace and
beauty.

Many a man has been ruined into salvation. The lightning which smote
his dearest hopes opened up a new rift in his dark life, and gave him
glimpses of himself which, until then, he had never seen.

The grave buried his dearest hopes, but uncovered possibilities in his
nature of patience, endurance, and hope which he never dreamed he
possessed before.

"Adversity is a severe instructor," says Edmund Burke, "set over us by
one who knows us better than we do ourselves, as he loves us better
too. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our
skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This conflict with difficulty
makes us acquainted with our object, and compels us to consider it in
all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial."

Men who have the right kind of material in them will assert their
personality, and rise in spite of a thousand adverse circumstances.
You cannot keep them down. Every obstacle seems only to add to their
ability to get on.

"Under different circumstances," says Castelar, "Savonarola would
undoubtedly have been a good husband, a tender father, a man unknown to
history, utterly powerless to print upon th