he went to work barefoot in the snow. He made a bargain with himself to
work sixteen hours a day. He fulfilled it to the letter, and when from
interruption he lost time, he robbed himself of sleep to make it up. He
became a wealthy merchant of New York, mayor of the city, and a member
of Congress.


COMMERCIAL COURAGE.

The business affairs of a gentleman named Rouss were once in a
complicated condition, owing to his conflicting interests in various
states, and he was thrown into prison. While confined he wrote on the
walls of his cell:

"I am forty years of age this day. When I am fifty, I shall be worth
half a million; and by the time I am sixty, I shall be worth a million
dollars."

He lived to accumulate more than three million dollars.

"The ruin which overtakes so many merchants," says Whipple, "is due not
so much to their lack of business talent as to their lack of business
nerve."

Cyrus W. Field had retired from business with a large fortune when he
became possessed with the idea that by means of a cable laid upon the
bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, telegraphic communication could be
established between Europe and America. He plunged into the undertaking
with all the force of his being. It was an incredibly hard contest: the
forests of Newfoundland, the lobby in Congress, the unskilled handling