A man may be defeated
Half a score of times or more,
His prospects may be darkened
And his heart be bruised and sore;
But let him smile triumphantly--
And call Misfortune's bluff.
For no man's ever conquered
Till he says: "I've got enough?"

Hans Christian Andersen, the famous Danish poet, says: "The life of
every man is a fairy tale written by God's finger." Carlyle says: "No
life of a man faithfully recorded but is a heroic poem."

With all the advice and experience one can acquire or have thrust upon
him it is passing strange how easy it is to go wrong in this world. It
forces one almost to the belief of him who wrote: "The aim is the man's,
the end is none of his own." Someone has said that the only guide a man
requires in this world is to side-step wrong doing. But like many prize
fighters, some of us are deficient in foot work.

If life is a mission and any other definition of it is false and
misleading, fate has certainly picked out some men as the hammer and
others as the anvil, some men for door-mats and others for those who
walk thereon.

Alfred claimed to have an aim in life but his entire family and a
township of relatives differed with him. Alfred's most ardent apologist
was compelled to admit that even though he was exerting himself greatly
to hold his course he was drifting.

The minstrels were back in the old quarters, Frank McKernan's shoe-shop,
rehearsing nightly.

At this time there came a proposition from a man of the town who had
recently failed in business. It is a peculiarity of human nature or the
fore ordination of fate that when a man fails in a commercial business
he engages in show business or life insurance. If he be not mentally
equipped to carry to success the business in which he failed, he
generally engages in a business that requires ability of a higher order
than that in which he was unsuccessful.

And so it was of the man who entered into an agreement to finance the
minstrels. He possessed a little money and a mother who was well
supplied with it. He spent money liberally in equipping the minstrels
for their first road venture. All preparations were quietly consummated
by order of Mr. Eli, as that gentleman had numerous creditors whose
feelings would have been terribly lacerated had they known that he was
soon to take himself away from them. Alfred soon had every arrangement
completed. He was very happy he was to realize the amb