of defenseless men and women and children were wantonly murdered in Kansas and elsewhere, by the defenders and propagators of slavery, for daring peacefully to resist their attempt to make of Kansas, contrary to the wishes of its people, and of the statutes, a slave state. But how bravely, mercilessly, because truthfully, Mr. Wilson exposed the weakness of the president who did not prevent those murders and outrages, and the fawning sycophancy of the politicians of the North who apologized for them, and how heroically he denounced to their faces the defenders of those crimes, and of the crimes of human slavery, in the Senate chamber, when one of their number, Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina, had made his dastardly and murderous assault in the Senate upon Charles Sumner.

Let the files of the "Congressional Globe" show his intense patriotism, his broad statesmanship, both before and during the progress of the civil war, and after its close, all of which is too well known to be here repeated. Massachusetts kept this man of single aim as her senator until he saw the liberation of millions of bondmen, and had witnessed the destruction of the most gigantic conspiracy against human progress that the centuries had known; and then when General Grant was elected president of the United States, in 1872, she gave him to preside as vice-president of the country over the legislative body where, for nearly a score of years, he had been the bravest, most patriotic, most hard working, and incorruptible member. So scrupulous had he been not to make his exalted position a means of worldly gain, that when this Natick cobbler, the sworn friend of the oppressed, whose one question as to measures or acts was ever, "Is it right, will it do good?" came to be inaugurated as vice-president of his country, he was obliged to borrow of his fellow senator, Charles Sumner, one hundred dollars to meet the necessary expense of the occasion. By his energy, his ability, and uprightness, he has shown to the poorest and humblest boy in the land that there are no barriers which can prevent his success if he enters upon his career with right principles and single aim.

It was said of William Wilberforce at his death, that "he had gone to God with the shackles of eight hundred thousand West India slaves in his hands," but Henry Wilson, the poor bond boy, had been one of the chief agents in breaking the shackles from four and a half millions. That purpose formed at the slave-pen in Washington was well carried out, not indeed as he had expected, but as God willed it.

Climbing the Ladder of Success.

JOHN C. DUEBER, President Hampden Watch Co., Canton, Ohio.

HAT famous English prime minister, George Canning,

THE

who, with Lord Brougham, was accounted the most famous political orator of the time, was born of poor parents. When but a year old, his father died, and the mother to earn her living became an actress. The wandering life of the mother worked disaster to her bright boy. He began to be dissipated when but a lad and would soon have gone to ruin if Moody, the actor, had not persuaded the boy's uncle, a man of property, to take him and educate him. The uncle consented on condition that he should abandon his waywardness, and at twelve years of age he was sent to Eton school. Here he took for his motto, "I must work if I would win," and applied himself with such diligence to his studies as to become the first scholar in his class, both in the schoolroom and in the debating society.

At eighteen he entered Oxford College, and, refusing to engage in the athletic sports of the school, he gave himself wholly to his studies, having, as he told a friend, a seat in the House of Commons in view. Graduating with high honors, he entered Parliament when but twenty-three years of age as an adherent and firm supporter of that eminent statesman, William Pitt. He became one of his secretaries and rose at length to be premier of the realm. He aimed at the top and by energy and application won renown and very early reached the goal he had set for himself.

At that same University of Oxford, fifty years before Canning's time, a poor lad had come like him thirsting for knowl