the last seven months, I have worked at this single wordspecia. I sent into the phonograph 'specia,' 'specia,' 'specia'; but the instrument responded pecia,'' pecia,'' pecia.' It was enough to drive one mad. But I held firm, and I have succeeded." What was it that stung the little, ugly, stuttering Jack Curran into eloquence, and led him to toil till he had become one of the most powerful and brilliant advocates in Great Britain? It was the sarcasm of a member of a club-the nickname of "Orator Mum" given to him, a law student, when, rising one evening to speak, he had failed in a most humiliating way, and sat down without uttering a word. What did he then do? Give up? No; he began at once committing to memory and declaiming, day after day, for several hours, with earnestness and distinctness of enunciation, before a mirror, passages from the masterpieces of literature. By this practice he gradually overcame his defects, and, having Lord Eldon's requisite to distinction, viz., "to be not worth a shilling," rose, in spite of his physical disadvantages and inborn shyness, to the Alpine heights of his profession. So miserably poor was he at his start in life that, writing afterward to a friend about his marriage, he said: "My wife and I were the only furniture of our apartments, and as to my rent, it stood pretty much the same chance of liquidation as the national debt.” John Ashley Cooper, the first earl of Shaftesbury, was born a cripple, and could not at any time in life move without his man and his crutch. "I was never," he once said, “without a dull, aching pain of that side." He suffered also from daily epileptic fits; yet he became a member of Oliver Cromwell's council, with reference to which that man of iron will used to say that "there was no one whom he was more at a loss how to manage than that Marcus Tullius Cicero, the little man with three names ❞—meaning Shaftesbury. "The little man" was afterward made chancellor by Charles II., and it is to him that every Englishman and every American is indebted for that sheet anchor of their liberties, the Habeas Corpus Act. Imprisoned in the Tower by the capricious king, and compelled at last. to fly to Holland, where he died, he seems never for a moment to have lost his self-confidence, his pluck, or elasticity and buoyancy of spirits. Some of the most extraordinary examples of pluck under disheartening circumstances have been furnished by military commanders. Napoleon said of one of his marshals, Massena, that "he was not himself until the battle began to go against him; then, when the dead fell in ranks about him, were awakened his powers of combination, and he put on terror and victory as a robe." Blücher, the obstinate old Prussian general, lost nine battles out of ten, but he quickly rallied and showed to Napoleon, after every defeat, a more formidable front than before. Defeated and wounded, and thrown from his horse at Ligny, he led his troops two days later through mud, up steep defiles, amid torrents of rain, from Wavre to Waterloo, and won with Wellington the immortal victory that sealed the fate of his foe. SOME PLUCKY MEN OF LETTERS Brilliant as are these instances, the literary calling has shown examples of grit as notable as any seen in the field of arms. Look at Gibbon, toiling for twenty years with herculean industry over his monumental history of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Seven years of ceaseless labor were spent in gathering and meditating on the materials for the work, the enormous scope of which rendered indispensable the most vast and accurate knowledge, not only of the whole range of Classical, Byzantine, Medieval, and Oriental literature, during upward of thirteen centuries, but also of some of the greatest religious and social changes that have shaped the destinies of man—the rise of Christianity, the Mussulman dominion, and the institutions of feudalism and chivalry. The amount of reading, almost wholly in foreign tongues, involved in such a task might well appall the most indefatigable student. The task was, nevertheless, achieved; but when the historian began the labor of writing his great work, "all was dark and doubtful," and he was tempted to throw away all his labor. Girding up his loins with heroic resolution, he toiled on for thirteen years more, at the end of which his colossal task was done and the gulf between ancient and modern history was bridged. See a Milton dictating his immortal epic in old age and in a world he cannot see; a Prescott and a Parkman writing their histories under constant physical discouragements; a Balzac consolidating his genius in a garret in Paris, in silence, in hunger, and in the deepest poverty; an Ainsworth patiently recompiling his Latin dictionary, which his wife had angrily burned; a Carlyle calmly buckling himself to the task of rewriting his "French Revolution," which had cost him years of thought and drudging research, the manuscript of which a housemaid had consigned as waste paper to the flames; and a Bulwer giving to the world a hundred volumes of novels, essays, plays, history, and epic and satirical poems, in spite of ill health and incessant sneers at his shallowness and dandyism! TENACITY OF PURPOSE What lessons are these for young men! "I have been watching the careers of young men in this city for thirty years," said an eminent New York preacher recently, "and I find that the chief difference between the successful and the failures lies in the single element of staying power." It is by tenacity of purpose, rather than by sudden dash, however brilliant, that success is won. Hindrances, checks, trials, instead of defeating one, should bring out one's native force. "Feeble natures," on the contrary, as Balzac strikingly says, "live in their sorrows, instead of converting them into apothegms of experience. They are saturated with them, and they consume themselves by sinking back each day into the misfortunes of the past. To forget is the great secret of strong and creative existences-to forget after the manner of Nature, which knows no past, and begins again every hour the mysteries of her indefatigable productiveness." Hearken to an old English dramatist: 66 The wise and active conquer difficulties LUCK, OR PLUCK? Murad the Unlucky By MARIA EDGEWORTH [Maria Edgeworth, a novelist of Irish life, who inspired Scott to depict Scottish character, was born near Reading, England, January 1, 1767. In 1782 her father inherited the family estate at Edgeworth, Ireland, whither they removed. Her education was pursued at home under her father's supervision, and all her literary work was subjected to his revision. Beginning with "Castle Rackrent" in 1801, she produced a series of novels dealing with the events of everyday life, amongst which are "The Absentee," "Leonora," "Belinda, ""Ennui," "Patronage," "Harrington," and "Osmond." Several volumes under the titles "Popular Tales, Fashionable Tales," and "Moral Tales,' issued from her pen. Our story, "Murad the Unlucky," is from “Popular Tales." In 1823 she visited Scott at Abbotsford, and two years later he returned the visit. She died at Edgeworthtown, May 21, 1849.] T is well known that the grand seignior amuses himself by going at night, in disguise, through the streets of Constantinople; as the caliph, Haroun Alraschid, used formerly to do in Bagdad. One moonlight night, accompanied by his grand vizier, he traversed several of the principal streets of the city, without seeing anything remarkable. At length, as they were passing a ropemaker's, the sultan recollected the Arabian story of Cogia-Hassan Alhabal, the ropemaker, and his two friends, Saad and Saadi, who differed so much in their opinion concerning the influence of fortune over human affairs. "What is your opinion on this subject?" said the grand seignior to his vizier. "I am inclined, please your majesty," replied the vizier, "to think that success in the world depends more upon prudence than upon what is called luck or fortune." "And I," said the sultan, "am persuaded that fortune does more for men than prudence. Do you not every day hear of persons who are said to be fortunate or unfortunate? How comes it that this opinion should prevail amongst men, if it be not justified by experience?" "It is not for me to dispute with your majesty," replied the prudent vizier. "Speak your mind freely; I desire and command it," said the sultan. "Then I am of opinion," answered the vizier, "that people are often led to believe others fortunate, or unfortunate, merely because they only know the general outline of their histories; and are ignorant of the incidents and events in which they have shown prudence or imprudence. I have heard, for instance, that there are at present in this city two men, who are remarkable for their good and bad fortune: one is called Murad the Unlucky, and the other Saladin the Lucky. Now I am inclined to think, if we could hear their stories, we should find that one is a prudent and the other an imprudent character." "Where do these men live?" interrupted the sultan. "I will hear their histories from their own lips, before I sleep." "Murad the Unlucky lives in the next square," said the vizier. The sultan desired to go thither immediately. Scarcely had they entered the square, when they heard the cry of loud lamentations. They followed the sound till they came to a house of which the door was open, and where there was a man tearing his turban and weeping bitterly. They asked the cause of his distress, and he pointed to the fragments of a china vase, which lay on the pavement at his door. "This seems undoubtedly to be beautiful china," said the sultan, taking up one of the broken pieces; "but can the loss of a china vase be the cause of such violent grief and despair?" "Ah, gentlemen," said the owner of the vase, suspending his lamentations and looking at the dress of the pretended merchants, "I see that you are strangers: you do not know how much cause I have for grief and despair! You do not know that you are speaking to Murad the Unlucky! Were you to |