t bug sat down and began to wonder
how the job was to be done."

II

PURPOSE FORMING

One of the interesting points the fascinated reader of biography comes
to look for is the first hint of the formation of the purpose that later
characterized the life of the subject. There is infinite variety, but in
every case there is apt to be something that takes the purposeful reader
back to the days when his own ambition was taking shape.

For instance, there is Daniel Boone. One would not be apt to select him
as an example of one whose life was ruled by a purpose deliberately
formed and adhered to for many years. Yet he had his vision of what he
desired to accomplish when, at twenty-one years of age, he was marching
from North Carolina to Pennsylvania to join Braddock's company. On the
way he met John Finley, a hunter who had traveled through Ohio and into
the wild regions to the south. His tale of Kentucky fired Boone's
imagination, and the two men planned to go there just as soon as the
trip to Fort Duquesne was at an end. It proved impossible to carry out
the plan for many years, but Boone never lost sight of his purpose, and
ultimately he carved out the Wilderness Road and opened the way for the
pioneers to seek homes in the Kentucky Wilderness.

Alexander Hamilton was but twelve years old when he wrote from his home
in St. Croix, in the West Indies, to a friend in America:

"I contemn the grovelling condition of a clerk, or the like, to which my
fortune condemns me, and would willingly risk my life, though not my
character, to exalt my station. I am confident, Ned, that my youth
excludes me from any hope of immediate preferment, nor do I desire it,
but I mean to prepare the way for futurity."

Not for a day did he lose sight of his purpose. The opportunity he
sought came years later. He sailed for America, and began the career
that led to usefulness and fame.

As a boy Robert Fulton was ambitious. He had two dreams. He wished to go
to Europe to study art, and he wished to buy a farm for his widowed
mother. For these objects he saved every dollar he could. On his
twenty-first birthday he took his mother and sister to the home he had
bought for them, and later in the same year he sailed for Europe.

When Peter Cooper was making his way against odds in New York City he
felt the need of an education. But he had to work by day and there was
no night school. Night after night he studied by the light of a tallow
candl