Value of Decision.

PROF. J. N. HUMPHREY, A.P., State Normal School, Whitewater, Wis.

HE decision of a single individual has more than once changed the current of the world's history; and that,

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too, not for an hour, but for centuries. Men now speak of such periods as epochs in the annals of time; they call their actors men of destiny. But they who lived in those periods. did not know that the clock of the heavens had struck for a change on earth, nor did the actors realize that the centuries were to turn on them. The revolutions on earth, like those of the heavens, swing on unknown centers, and it is only when the periods are complete that men recognize the extent of the change.

Who of those who lived in the days of that poor Genoese wool-carder, Domenico Colombo, ever dreamed that the world's history and progress depended so much on that man's son, and would be so greatly changed by his seemingly wild decision to explore an unknown sea? Nor did that homeless and penniless sailor, as he wandered from place to place, begging now of grandees and anon of kings for the means to test his notion of a water route to the East Indies, and determine the possible existence of other lands on the way thither, ever for one moment suspect the momentous issues that depended upon his keeping that decision. But how much of the world's wealth, how very much of the world's progress toward better things, hung on that decision!

Who can yet tell how much the world has been influenced, commercially, politically, socially, religiously, by the existence and example of the United States? How much has humanity

gained by our free institutions, and our system of national government? What would be the condition of the world to-day without them? If Columbus had abandoned his decision, would another have soon made the journey? Or, would the world yet be in the depths of the superstitions and darkness of his time? Vain questions, perhaps, yet they give a faint glimpse of what was involved in that one man's decision, persistently maintained, to undertake an enterprise universally condemned and scoffed at by the men of his day.

Neither did that Wittenberg friar, Martin Luther, who in 1517 decided to publish his ninety-five propositions against the indulgence act just issued by Pope Leo X., have the faintest notion that he was then beginning the most memorable religious revolution of a thousand years. Nor did John Adams, two hundred and fifty years later, understand to what his decision to oppose the Stamp Act of 1765 would lead him and others. But nine years after that decision, it had brought him to write upon the eve of the assembling of the first Continental Congress, "The die is now cast; I have passed the Rubicon. Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish with my country, is my unalterable determination." And then, two years later, with his indorsement, was passed that immortal resolution that "these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states." At the birth of this new nation of the West, the world entered upon a new political era, and a new civilization, with the people as ruler.

History, as men know it, is almost wholly a record of the doings of such men of decision. It is they who rule the world. Difficulties and dangers are to them but new incentives to action. Defeats do not discourage them, but rather give them new wisdom wherewith to circumvent and conquer opposing forces. While others are lamenting that circumstances prevent their success, these men make of circumstances a ladder with which to reach success. They climb and conquer with them or over them. How grandly they tower above difficulties and glory over them!

See yonder stuttering, shrugging youth dress the populace of Athens in the bema.

attempting to adWhat a miserable

failure he makes of it! How the crowd jeer at him! Surely nature did not design him for an orator. He is weak of body, and insignificant in form. He is subject to fits of despondency that verge on madness. He is also excessively poor; for his guardians have defrauded him of his inheritance and turned him out on the world. Reason enough, surely, why he should fail. But the indomitable will within him asserts itself. The mocking crowd shall yet listen to him. See him now down at the seashore shouting at the roaring waves in order to accustom himself to hear unmoved the angry roar of his fellow citizens' voices in their oft turbulent assemblies. Hour after hour he gesticulates, with sword points at his shoulders to prevent that awkward habit of shrugging. Day after day he speaks with pebbles in his mouth to cure his stammering. His fellow men must hear him. And they did, for ere long, in his mighty philippics that "shook the arsenal and fulminated over Greece," he moved them as does the wind the forest's leaves, and they rapturously crowned him with the palm as the king of orators, -a title that twenty-two centuries have not yet taken from Demosthenes of Athens.

One hundred and sixty years ago, an English lad, scarce seven years of age, stood on a slight knoll looking out over one of England's many lovely landscapes. Daylesford Manor was spread out before him. The picturesque village with its thatched cottages, the old stone church with its coat of ivy, the magnificent park of ancient oaks and elms with its great herd of deer, the vast pastures with their fine herds of cattle, and the broad fields of waving grain, successively attracted his gaze. The lad's parents were dead. The grandfather with whom he lived was old and poor, and that grandfather had told him that there had been a time when all that magnificence had been the possession of his ancestors. No wonder the boy, as he looked abroad over that great estate, was sad. No wonder that the hot tears came.