ffed, hissed
from the House of Commons, he simply says, "The time will come when you
will hear me." The time did come, and the boy with no chance swayed
the sceptre of England for a quarter of a century.

One of the most remarkable examples in history is Disraeli, forcing his
leadership upon that very party whose prejudices were deepest against
his race, and which had an utter contempt for self-made men and
interlopers. Imagine England's surprise when she awoke to find this
insignificant Hebrew actually Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was
easily master of all the tortures supplied by the armory of rhetoric;
he could exhaust the resources of the bitterest invective; he could
sting Gladstone out of his self-control; he was absolute master of
himself and his situation. You can see that this young man intends to
make his way in the world. A determined audacity is in his very face.
He is a gay fop. Handsome, with the hated Hebrew blood in his veins,
after three defeats in parliamentary elections he was not the least
daunted, for he knew his day would come, as it did. Lord Melbourne,
the great Prime Minister, when this gay young fop was introduced to
him, asked him what he wished to be. "Prime Minister of England," was
his audacious reply.

One of the greatest preachers of modern times, Lacordaire, failed again
and again. Everybody said he would never make a preacher, but he was
determined to succeed, and in two years from his humiliating failures
he was preaching in Notre Dame to immense congregations.

The boy Thorwaldsen, whose father died in the poor-house, and whose
education was so scanty that he had to write his letters over many
times before they could be posted, by his indomitable perseverance,
tenacity, and grit, fascinated the world with the genius which neither
his discouraging father, poverty, nor hardship could suppress.

William H. Seward was given a thousand dollars by his father to go to
college with; this was all he was to have. The son returned at the end
of the freshman year with extravagant habits and no money. His father
refused to give him more, and told him he could not stay at home. When
the youth found the props all taken out from under him, and that he
must now sink or swim, he left home moneyless, returned to college,
graduated at the head of his class, studied law, was elected Governor
of New York, and became Lincoln's great Secretary of State during the
Civil War.

Louisa M. Alc