Horace Vernet's enthusiasm and devotion to the one idea of his life knew no bounds. He had himself lashed to the mast in a terrible gale on the Mediterranean when all others on board were seized with terror, and with great delight sketched the towering waves which threatened every minute to swallow the vessel. Several writers tell the story that a great artist, Giotto, about to paint the crucifixion, induced a poor man to let him bind him upon a cross in order that he might get a better idea of the terrible scene that he was about to put upon the canvas. He promised faithfully that he would release his model in an hour, but to the latter's horror the painter seized a dagger and plunged it into his heart; and, while the blood was streaming from the ghastly wound, painted his death agony.

Beecher was a very dull boy and was the last member of the family of whom anything was expected. He had a weak memory, and disliked study. He shunned society and wanted to go to sea. Even when he went to college many of his classmates stood ahead of him, who have fallen into oblivion. But when he was converted his whole life changed: he was full of enthusiasm, hopefulness and zeal. Nothing was too menial for him to undertake to carry his purpose. He chopped wood, built the fire in his little church in Lawrenceburg, Ind., of only eighteen members, cleaned the lamps, swept

the floor and washed the windows. He built the fire, baked, washed, when his wife was ill. The pent-up enthusiasm of his

ambitious life burst the barriers of his inhospitable surroundings until he blossomed out into America's greatest pulpit orator.

When Handel was a little boy he bought a clavichord, hid it in the attic, and went there at night to play upon it, muffling the strings with small pieces of fine woolen cloth so that the sounds should not wake the family. Michael Angelo neglected school to copy drawings which he dared not carry home. Murillo filled the margin of his school-book with drawings. Dryden read Polybius before he was ten years old. Le Brum, when a boy, drew with a piece of charcoal on the walls of the house. Pope wrote excellent verses at fourteen. Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician, composed at sixteen a tract on the conic sections.

Professor Agassiz was so enthusiastic in his work and so loved the fishes, the fowl and the cattle that it is said these creatures would die for him to give him their skeletons. His father wanted him to fit for commercial life, but the fish haunted him day and night.

Confucius said that "he was so eager in the pursuit of knowledge that he forgot his food;" and that, "in the joy of its attainment, he forgot his sorrows;" and that "he did not even perceive that old age was coming on.'

"That boy tries to make himself useful," said an employer of the errand boy, George W. Childs. It is this trying to be useful and helpful that promotes us in life.

Once, when Mr. Harvey, an accomplished mathematician, was in a bookseller's shop, he saw a poor lad of mean appearance enter and write something on a slip of paper and give it to the proprietor. On inquiry he found this was a poor deaf boy, Kitto, who afterward became one of the most noted Biblical scholars in the world, and who wrote his first book in the poor-house. He had come to borrow a book. When a lad he had fallen backward from a ladder thirty-five feet upon the pavement with a load of slates that he was carrying to the roof. The poor

lad was so thirsty for books that he would borrow from booksellers who would loan them to him out of pity, read them and return them.

The Youth's Companion says that Mr. Edison in his new biography-his "Life and Inventions"-describes the accidental method by which he discovered the principle of the phonograph. There is a kind of accident that happens only to a certain. kind of man.

"I was singing to the mouthpiece of a telephone," Mr. Edison says, "when the vibrations of the voice sent the fine steel point into my finger. That set me to thinking. If I could record the actions of the

point, and send the point over the same surface afterward, I saw no reason why the thing would not talk.

"I tried the experiment first on a slip of telegraph paper and found that the point made an alphabet. I shouted the words 'Halloo! Halloo!' into the mouthpiece, ran the paper back over the steel point, and heard a faint 'Halloo! Halloo!' in return.

"I determined to make a machine that would work accurately, and gave my assistants instructions, telling them what I had discovered. They laughed at me. That's the whole story. The phonograph is the result of the pricking of a finger.'

It is one thing to hit upon an idea, however, and another thing to carry it out to perfection. The machine would talk, but, like many young children, it had difficulty with certain sounds-in the present case with aspirants and sibilants. Mr. Edison's biographers say, but the statement is somewhat exaggerated:

"He has frequently spent from fifteen to twenty hours daily, for six or seven months on a stretch, dinning the word 'Spezia,' for example, into the stubborn surface of the wax. Spezia,' roared the inventor, 'Pezia ' lisped the phonograph in tones of ladylike reserve, and so on through thousands of graded repetitions till the desired results were obtained.

"The primary education of the phonograph was comical in the extreme. To hear those grave and reverend signors, rich in scientific honors, patiently reiterating:

Mary had a little lamb,

A little lamb, lamb, LAMB,

and elaborating that point with anxious gravity, was to receive a practical demonstration of the eternal unfitness of things."

Milton, when blind, old and poor, showed a royal cheerfulness and never "bated one jot of heart or hope, but steered right onward."

Dickens' characters seemed to possess him, and haunt him day and night until properly portrayed in his stories.

At a time when it was considered dangerous to society in Europe for the common people to read books and listen to lectures on any but religious subjects, Charles Knight determined to enlighten the masses by cheap literature. He believed that a paper could be instructive and not be dull, cheap without being wicked. He started the Penny Magazine, which acquired a circulation of 200,000 the first year. Knight projected the Penny Cyclopedia, the Library of Entertaining Knowledge, Half-Hours With the Best Authors, and other useful books at a low price. His whole adult life was spent in the work of elevating the common people by cheap, yet wholesome, publications. He died in poverty, but grateful