putting things through, who is looked to to take the lead. It is personal power that is everywhere in demand, and the man who puts vigor and virility in his action, who puts pluck and determination into whatever he undertakes, is always pushed to the front in those crucial moments that are called great opportunities.

I know a young man who has only been away from a very modest home a few years who has recently been offered a ten-thousand-dollar salary several times by different concerns. He is not a genius, he has no great talent, but he knows how to stick to his proposition, he knows what it means to "hang on with a bull-dog grip." He knows the power of hard work, the miracle of a ceaseless industry and he is willing to pay the price of promotion. That is all the secret there is in his "great opportunities." There is no mystery, no special luck, no marked destiny in this young man's advancement; he simply seized and applied the best substitute for brilliant talent—downright hard work. He knows how to stick and dig and push and save—there lies his secret. He didn't wait for a "sure thing to come." George Eliot says:

"No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty."

The men who asked for certainty never did very remarkable things in the world. It takes nerve to do the things that are worth while, because they

are worth while, and regardless of the great odds on the other side. A man must have some "dare" in his nature if he would win out.

It is easy to make excuses for ourselves in the lack of opportunity, but as a rule if we long for a thing with sufficient intensity, we manage somehow to get it, at least approximately.

The new science of practical psychology is going to work miracles in the lives of the great army of failures; the men and women who have been sent to prisons and poorhouses as waste material, stuff that is of no further use to society. There are multitudes of so-called poor men and women to-day who are rich in ability and talent, but who have failed temporarily because they have lost their grip on themselves. They allowed their will to weaken. Many of them lost their property or their position in some great financial crisis and became discouraged. There is plenty of latent power still left in most of them: they only need arousing. When they realize that they are re-enforced by a conscious supply from the Omnipotent Source of all life and have that within themselves that can lift them Out of poverty and failure they will refuse to stay lying down. They will rise to their feet and prove their kinship. As Phillips Brooks well said: "When a human being gets a glimpse of his better self, his higher, diviner self, he will never again be satisfied until he becomes that other better thing which he sees."

What wonderful examples we have in the supposedly good-for-nothings, the criminals even, who have been converted to Christianity and made selfrespecting, self-supporting members of society. How many men who have been positive menace to society, all at once, when the spark of hope awoke their sleeping natures, have turned about face and become healthful, useful, successful citizens again!

Some of the most useful men in the history of the world, men who have left a tremendous impress on human lives, were once down-and-outs, failures. Something touched them, awakened the God within and they turned their faces from despair to hope, from discouragement to expectation of grander things. It may have been a book they read, a word of encouragement or a little kindness that inspired them to make something of their lives. Whatever it was, it made just the difference between success and failure. It started them on the right road, turned them from ugliness to beauty, from wrong to right, from a life of dissipation to a career of usefulness. This little thing it was that made all the difference between a miserable liability and a glorious asset to society.

We each must make our own fight, make and keep our own resolutions, conquer our own weaknesses and vices. Nobody can do those things for us, although they may encourage us. So far as real improvement is concerned, so far as our actual ma

terial salvation is concerned, each of us might just as well be the only living being on a desert island with only water around and sky above.

If you have any lack in your nature, if you are poor, if you lack money to go to college or to start in business, if you lack influence, that is all the more reason why you should call out the best that is in you and determine that no handicap shall cripple your life or hinder your progress. It is not a very difficult thing to overcome a handicap. It is just a question of determination, of clear grit and will. This is the best substitute for capital, for beauty, for influence.

You may be poor, you may have nobody to push you or encourage you; but if you have will and determination you can defy the world. You can put them in the place of capital or influence. They will help you when friends fail you, when others desert you.

History shows that the men and women who have done the most to help the world along have developed their characters through contact with inhospitable and apparently unfriendly environment.

Great inventors worked for years amid want and woe and frightful discouragements—denounced by relatives, misunderstood by friends—to produce something that will ameliorate the hard conditions of life. Compare their resolute determination with the namby-pamby, milk-and-water desire of some of our easy-going, invertebrate youth who would

like to do something, if it does not cost much in effort or sacrifice or time.

There is a vast difference between merely desiring to do a certain thing, and clenching one's teeth and one's fists with a resolute determination to do it.

The great miracles of civilization have been wrought by the men who had so set their heart on their aim that nothing could keep them from pressing on.

What can you do with a man who has such a passion for achieving his heart's desire that he braves innumerable dangers, starvation, and death even, rather than give up?

When a man is willing to stake all of his future, his property, his reputation, everything he possesses in the world, even existence itself, upon the fulfillment of his heart's desire, there isn't much you can do with him but let him go ahead.

Obstacles look large or small to the man in proportion to his strength and determination to master them. If a little man, they look large; if a large man, difficulties look small in comparison with the advantage of what he longs for and what he proposes. The harder things go, the greater the obstacles, the greater is the grit to annihilate them.

Some people look upon every setback as final, or else they regard it as an indication that they are not made of winning stuff. But the man who sits down and whines and grumbles at his lot because