"Twenty years ago I resolved to make the family independent if I could.
At forty, that is done. Debts all paid, even the outlawed ones, and we
have enough to be comfortable. It has cost me my health, perhaps."


"I TRAMPLE ON IMPOSSIBILITIES":

So it was said by Lord Chatham. "Why," asked Mirabeau, "should we call
ourselves men, unless it be to succeed in everything everywhere?"

"It is all very well," said Charles J. Fox, "to tell me that a young man
has distinguished himself by a brilliant first speech. He may go on
satisfied with his first triumph; but show me a young man who has not
succeeded at first, and has then gone on, and I will back that man to do
better than those who succeeded at the first trial." Cobden broke down
completely the first time he appeared on a platform in Manchester, and
the chairman apologized for him; but he did not give up speaking until
every poor man in England had a larger, better, and cheaper loaf. Young
Disraeli sprung from a hated and persecuted race, pushed his way up
through the middle classes and upper classes, until he stood self-poised
upon the topmost round of political and social power. At first he was
scoffed at, ridiculed, rebuffed, hissed from the House of Commons; he
simply said, "The time will come when you will hear me." The time did
come, and he swayed the sceptre of England for a quarter of a century.

How massive was the incalculable reserve power of Lincoln as a youth; or
of President Garfield, wood-chopper, bell-ringer, and sweeper-general in
college!