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 tour 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.

TH

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

HAT famous English prime minister, George Canning, 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 know]

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.

He

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. 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. 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. Was it greater, or 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.

Supe

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,