edge, and longing to rise. He entered the school as chore boy, and paid his way by blacking the shoes of the professors and students. He had been, he said, a vicious boy, but he at times had tried to help his mother (a widow who kept a small inn at Bristol) by sweeping and mopping the room. But one day Thomas à Kempis's book had fallen into his hands through some means, and it had changed the current of his life. The lad said he was not above hard work, and if possible he would like to work his way through college. So he blacked shoes and did chores for a living, and studied as he could.

The morals of the university were very low; infidelity ran wild among both professors and students, and this lad of sixteen, who insisted upon a strict religious course of life, was most mercilessly ridiculed by them.

The poor boy had set his mind upon being a great preacher, and undismayed he wandered out into the surrounding fields, where he would recite his sermons and meditate and pray. He had a marvelous voice, but not one of those who mocked at him. ever for one moment dreamed that the bootblack was destined to become the flaming evangel of England and America and the most wonderful pulpit orator the world has yet seen, a man who could, as Garrick, the actor, said of him, make men laugh or cry by his intonation of the word Mesopotamia.

The majority of his fellow students were content with mediocrity and are unknown, while the name of George Whitefield, whose body awaits the resurrection morning in the old church at Newburyport, Mass., is held in loving remembrance by millions on both sides of the Atlantic as a very angel of God.

Supe

Was it greater, or

If you look over the line of great men of any age, you cannot but be impressed with this fact, that there was something within them that impelled them to rise. What was it? rior mental endowments? Very rarely. better, or earlier advantages of education? No, generally the opposite. Was it greater physical force? But seldom, if at all. What, then, was it? Almost invariably there is but one answer, viz., the power of will.

Men differ greatly in intellect, but will is not intellect. The natural appetite and desires of men, while nearly uniform, yet vary in intensity; but will is not appetite nor desire. The cause of a fact should not be confounded with the fact itself; and here is a fact, that the masses of men seem content to remain at a common level of desire and aspiration, which level is as yet at the bottom, where of necessity the competition must by the mere force of numbers be greater, while only here and there one out of the mass rises above his fellows. For instance, in business life there are many mechanics now in the industrial world, but few of them are what may be termed really first-class.

There are many lawyers, but very few are first class. Wherever you may go, a first-class orator, or reader, or teacher, or preacher, or merchant, is rarely found, and when found no one of them is exceptionally endowed with intellect above his fellow men. It is often found that many others had similar desires and aspirations, but they did not rise, while these few did. Why? Scan it closely, and you find that these willed to rise. They resolved to be masters of circumstances, while the masses drifted with those circumstances. Because their parents were poor was only to these a reason why they should not remain so. Difficulties were not obstacles, least of all were they a cause for discouragement or an excuse for a defeat. Why, difficulties and obstacles were the very things made for the will to combat and overcome! If not, what need of a will at all? What is will for but for combat and rule? Is the strife unequal? Then the more glory to the conqueror. Surely it is no great thing if Xerxes with his millions overcame Leonidas. Not to do it is a disgrace. But for Leonidas with his Spartan band of six hundred to overcome Xerxes's millions, ay, that were immortal renown! So these men of success set their will in array against the natural things made for wills to contend with and overcame them, and that is all there was to it. It was no mystery or fortunate combination of circumstances, though, as said before, these are often great aids to success,

inasmuch as it is necessarily easier to overcome a little difficulty than a multitude of greater ones.

Two young men, students of Yale College, were one day discussing their future plans, when one of them declared it to be his purpose to become a member of Congress within six years. His companion generously laughed at what he imagined was a fond conceit. Said the other, "If I did not believe that I shall be a member of Congress within six years from to-day I would immediately leave college." He had decided on his plans; he was fitting himself accordingly. He had set his will to accomplish it if life and health remained to him, and within the six years John C. Calhoun became a member of Congress and was destined to wield an influence by force of his will, the evil results of which yet abide in our country.

Our minds are the vital force that deals with and governs to a large extent physical facts, and the will is the vital force of the mind without which mind seems useless and simply the creature of every whim of desire or gust of passion. Who can estimate the power of will?

But a little more than a hundred years ago the immense armies of Russia, Austria, and France, with their allies, struggled during the Seven Years' War to conquer the indomitable will of a single man, the flute player of Potsdam, and failed. Again and again they sought to overwhelm him with armies that outnumbered his three to one; armies led by veteran generals who had won many a bloody field. But the flute player knew that if he yielded the rising nationality of Prussia would be extinguished. He must conquer or perish. And so he set his mighty will in array and on the awful fields of Rossbach, Leuthen, and Zorndorf he heroically beat back his foes. They had eighty millions of people from which to recruit their armies while he had less than four. So it came to pass when the sun went down on the dreadful field of Kunersdorf, twenty thousand of his army lay dead and he had left scarce three thousand. What wonder that he was on the borders of despair?

But the wonderful will of Frederick the Great, held by the