he had expected. During the school year he did
chores, rang the bell for the change of classes, did janitor work, and
waited on table in restaurants. In the summer he found work on farms
near by.

"No task is too difficult for the man with a purpose," declared a worker
with young men, some of whom were ready to give up. "Two things are
necessary if you would be successful," was another man's message to
those whom he wished to inspire to do purposeful work. "First: know what
you want to do. Second: do it."

Those who permit obstacles to stand in the way of the performance of
tasks they know they ought to perform if they would make the most of
themselves, need to take to heart the message given by a mother to her
son when he was ready to give up the unequal struggle with poverty and
physical infirmity. "Thou wilt have much to bear, many hardships to
suffer," she said. "But mark what I say, we must not mind the trouble.
During the first part of the night we must prepare the bed on which to
stretch ourselves during the latter part."

Giving up after failure is always easier than trying again, but the men
and women who count are those who will not be dismayed by failure. When
J. Marion Sims, the famous surgeon, was beginning the practice of
medicine, he proudly tacked an immense tin sign on the front of his
office. Then he lost two patients, and pride and courage both failed
him. "I just took down that long tin signboard from my door," he wrote
in the story of his life. "There was an old well back of the house,
covered over with boards. I went to the well, took that sign with me,
dropped it in there, and covered the old well over again. I was no
longer a doctor in the town." But fortunately he conquered
discouragement, made a fresh beginning, and overcame tremendous
obstacles. After his death a famous man said that if all his discoveries
should be suppressed, it would be found that his own peculiar branch of
surgery had gone backward at least twenty-five years.

Indomitable perseverance is necessary for the business man as for the
professional man; and it will just as surely bring reward to those who
are engaged in Christian work as to those who are seeking worldly honor.
So when the uphill climb seems too difficult, there must be no
faltering. Remember--as Christina Rossetti said--"We shall escape the
uphill by never turning back."

In gathering material for a history of Charles V of Spain, a Spanish
historian was pa