The Secret of Making Things Turn Up.

REV. JAMES W. COLE, B.D.

"The heights by great men reached and kept,
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,

Were toiling upward in the night."

AOME of them were, but not all. Some persons have stum

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bled into great places for a time, or upon a great fortune,

and so have gained a name and fame that could not be said to be either of their making or seeking. They simply happened to be there at the auspicious time and place and were lifted into greatness. Some have inherited special conditions favorable to gaining a fortune or fame; but outside of or without those conditions, they would have been only ordinary persons in ordinary circumstances of life. Others have attained to great fortune and eminent distinction regardless of the most unpromising circumstances of birth and life. Yet even these last were not independent of place, and time, and education for their success. Indeed, it may be truthfully said that no man is wholly independent of circumstances; and that his environment will determine both his place in history, and his degree of success in life. Would Shakespeare have been Shakespeare in any other age or country? If Dante had lived in our time, he could not write "The Inferno," neither could Milton now write "Paradise Lost." The progress of thought since their day would prevent. Alexander the Great could not now conquer the world; nor should we have the famous names of Wellington, Grant, or Sherman, if they had lived in more peaceful times. What other age, or what other country, could produce the present enormous number of American millionaires? Great names as well as

great riches are sometimes due to other causes than an overmastering intellect, or "the hand of the diligent."

The owner of a corner lot in San Francisco, California, traded it for a suit of clothes. The lot is now worth over a million dollars; but it was not "the hand of the diligent" that made its present owner the millionaire. In Melbourne, Australia, in 1837, a corner lot was sold for one hundred and sixty dollars. Fifty years later it was worth $2,466,500, and its owner a rich man, but not by his own "diligent hand."

The founder of the house of Rothschild was a poor Jewish clerk in Hanover, Germany. He afterward began business in a very small way as banker at Frankfort, and became distinguished for two things, his shrewd good sense and unswerving integrity. When the French army invaded Hesse-Cassel in 1806, compelling the Elector William to flee the land, William deposited with Mr. Rothschild for safe keeping for eight years, the sum of five millions of dollars without interest, or security other than his integrity. It was the judicious investment of this huge sum left to him without interest, and not merely the "hand of the diligent," that was the prolific source from whence came the present colossal fortune of the house of the Rothschilds. When Meyer Anselm Rothschild died, his heirs continued to pay the Elector an annual interest of two per cent. on the five millions, until in 1823 they paid the principal to William's son and heir.

So, likewise, the vicissitudes of the war of 1812 gave to Stephen Girard the bulk of his millions, just as the civil war enabled other men to amass their present great fortunes. Said the old Celtic-Breton law, "There are three periods at which the world is worthless, the time of plague, the time of a general war, the time of a dissolution of spoken promises." But in each of these times a few persons become greatly rich. While our late war wasted hundreds on hundreds of millions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of human lives, it also developed hitherto unsuspected resources of wealth and methods of getting rich, together with a surprising energy of mind that

made some men very wealthy and others greatly famous. Nevertheless, war is robbery; war is infamy; or, as General Sherman tersely, truthfully, put it, "War is hell." Mankind will yet come to see that slaughtering one's fellow man is the most unremunerative industry ever devised on God's green earth; and, like all forms of injustice, it is sure to bring either sooner or later, its own dire, evil effects. When righteous laws shall prevail, then cannon shall remain silent.

Man never would have emerged from barbarism if he had not sought out and made use of the hidden wealth of the land. And to do it successfully, men require and must have freedom, intelligence, and morality. Wherever tyranny prevails, the people are poor. Few under absolute monarchies are rich, and their riches, like that of the governments themselves, were due to plunder taken from others less powerful. Education is necessary to obtain wealth. Coal, electricity, sunlight, water, and air have been in the earth since man was created, but ignorance got no wealth out of them, nor ever would. Men educated to desire only the bare necessaries of existence never make a market for anything but those necessaries. Educate them to appreciate and to desire other things, and you increase both their wealth and the wealth of the world. Not only is education thus necessary to increase wealth, but the best educated man has the most chances for success in life. The editors of the Dictionary of American Biography, who diligently searched the records of living and dead Americans, found, as elsewhere stated, fifteen thousand one hundred and forty-two names worthy of a place in their six volumes of annals of successful men, and five thousand three hundred and twenty-six, or more than one-third of them, were college educated men. One in forty of the college educated attained a success worthy of mention, and but one in ten thousand of those not so educated, so that the college-bred man had two hundred and fifty times the chances for success that others had. To particularize: Medical records show that but five per cent. of the practicing physicians of the United States are

college graduates; and yet forty-six per cent. of the physicians who became locally famous enough to be mentioned by those editors came from that small five per cent. of college educated persons. Less than four per cent. of the lawyers are collegebred, yet they furnished more than one-half of all who became successful. Not one per cent. of the business men of the country were college educated, yet that small fraction of college-bred men had seventeen times the chances of success that their fellow men of business had. In brief, the college educated lawyer has fifty per cent. more chances for success than those not so favored; the college educated physician forty-six per cent. more; the author, thirty-seven per cent. more; the statesman, thirty-three per cent.; the clergyman, fifty-eight per cent.; the educator, sixty-one per cent.; the scientist, sixty-three per cent. You should therefore get the best and most complete education that it is possible for you to obtain.

Morality, integrity, and education constitute a triangle of power for turning possibilities into realities. A man may succeed without much of an education, but his chances of success are immensely enhanced if he possesses a good education. We do not mean by this that a man must spend years within the walls of a college. A person may become well educated and never see the inside of a college or even a high school.

The present day affords opportunities for gathering knowledge which lies within reach of everybody, and he who would gain knowledge need not remain ignorant.

Knowledge, then, is one of the secret keys which unlock the hidden mysteries of a successful life.

Get knowledge, be strictly honest, be diligent, and persevere, and you have the secret of turning things up and making your life a success.

Luck and Labor.

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REV. GEORGE T. WINSTON, D.D., LL.D.
President University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

IFE is full of golden chances, but only wisdom sees them and only labor reaps their harvest.

"Luck comes to

those who look after it," says a Spanish proverb. "Luck meets the fool, but he seizes it not," says the German.

The great Napoleon declared himself a "Child of Destiny" and professed to believe in luck. After Waterloo he confessed his real belief. "Providence," said he, "fights on the side of the strongest battalions." God helps those who help themselves.

Among the Greeks and Romans luck was worshiped as a goddess. But even in that age of childish superstition and scientific darkness, wise men saw the folly of worshiping what we ourselves create.

"Nullum numen habes, si sit prudentia; nos te,

Nos facimus, Fortuna, deam caeloque locamus.”

"O Luck, thou hast no existence, if we were only wise; it is we, it is we that make thee a goddess and place thee in the skies."

Genuine sons of fortune are always self-begotten. From the obscurity of doubtful birth and life in a cabin, Abraham Lincoln rose to the height of human power and fame. Fortune. was ever at his side to make him or to mar. He took her gently by the hand and made her his servant. What Clay and Webster, what Chase and Seward, what Everett and Douglas, could not accomplish was done by the humble rail-splitter. The same opportunities came to them all. Lincoln seized them and held them with such wisdom and power that he seemed almost to create them. Fortune knocked at his door and he