tion with obstacles by which many a poor boy has found his way to the editorial chair or to a seat in Congress. Mr. Brooks began his career as a clerk in the village of Androscoggin, Me., where he was to remain till twenty-one years of age, when, by contract, he was to receive as capital from his employer a hogshead of New England rum. Unfortunately for his employer and the hogshead of rum, the town library was kept in the "store," of which the clerk made a liberal use. His first venture in business enabled him to save money enough to pay one dollar a week for his board, while a kind gentleman assisted him to go to school. As soon as he knew enough to teach school, he began as a pedagogue on the liberal salary of ten dollars per month and his board. In a year he was rich enough to enter Waterville College. Studying and teaching by turns, he graduated at the end of two years, carrying his trunk to the stage-office, as he did when he entered, to save a few of his hard-earned and scanty shillings. From this hour he provided a home for his mother and her two younger children, his father having died in his childhood.

Mr. Brooks next studied law with the noted John Neal, of Portland, taught school, and at the same time wrote a series of anonymous letters for the Portland Advertiser, a daily Whig paper, which were so popular that its proprietor made him an offer of five hundred dollars per year to write constantly for his journal. At this time, though only twenty years old, he had become one of the most popular and eloquent orators of his State. After serving in the Legislature of Maine, in connection with his editorial duties on the Portland Advertiser he went to Washington in 1832, and began the series of letters which for the first time caught up and reflected in clear and brilliant light the multiform life of the American capital. The letters became immediately popular, and were copied by the press from Maine to Louisiana. One of the most signal proofs of their brilliancy and power is to be found in the words of Senator Wilson: "I shall never forget what those letters were to me. The first I had ever read, they came to me in my

obscurity and poverty as the revelation of an unknown and wonderful life. They made me want to go to Washington. They made me feel that I must go there, and see the men and witness the national scenes which I read about in these letters."

Subsequently Mr. Brooks wrote a series of letters from the Southern States; then visited Europe, and, travelling on foot through the principal countries, sent home to the Portland Advertiser letters depicting almost every phase of life, from that seen in the palace of the nobleman to the cottage of the peasant. Next he started the New York Express, carrying it alone for years under a heavy load of debt and discouragement, -acting as leading editor, reporter, day editor, night editor, and even type-setter, - and in 1849 was elected to Congress as a representative of New York City, a place which, with the exception of a single term, he has held ever since. In that place he has distinguished himself by his eloquence and high legislative qualities, representing in the House, it is said, the type of culture and oratory of which Mr. Sumner is the exemplar in the Senate.

Even those successful men who have begun their professional careers in America under favorable circumstances have not gone through the battle of life unscathed. They all bear in their faces and bodies the scars of the fighting-man, the signs of desperate conflict. Such was emphatically the case with Rufus Choate, as his haggard face and trembling, nervous frame too plainly showed; and such, if we may trust a reporter of a New York paper, is the case with one of the most brilliant lawyers of that city: "In that pale and almost emaciated face," says the writer, "that fragile enwrapment of body which seems shaken with the earnestness of its own talk under the picture of Humboldt at the mantel-piece, is packed that library of knowledge and that fiery concentration of eloquent speech which, collectively, make up the product among men called William M. Evarts. He looks like a man whom his soul has burned up with its own intensity till all that was inflammable

has exhaled, - leaving a thin asbestos body, and a face lit up with great, weird, far-seeing eyes. He seldom laughs, but he is not ungenial, only so immeasurably in earnest that he has

no time to laugh."

It is true that in every calling one meets sometimes with obstacles that seem utterly insurmountable, - obstacles which baffle for a time the sagacity and energy of the most determined men, and almost compel them to give up in despair. But nil desperandum; do not give up, reader, while you have health and strength, however dark your present prospects. The circumstances which now obstruct and hem you in (circumstances are made of india-rubber for strong men, of iron for weak men,) may give way, if you keep on. "Go ahead," keep pushing, and a passage will by and by open, as if by magic, before you, and your little bark of hope and adventure will pass through unharmed, as did Dr. Kane's boats more than once through horrible cliffs of ice on either side, which threatened to crush them in a moment. It has been observed that in going through the Notch of the White Mountains the road seems frequently to the traveller to be shut in by frowning precipices, so as to render further progress impossible; but, as he nears the obstacles, he finds the path curving gracefully and safely along the terrace cut for it through the gorge. So the fearful obstructions that bid defiance to our progress in life are generally only apparent, and will vanish as soon as we confront them.

Even if battling with inward disease, as well as with outward. foes, you may, with a heroic spirit, triumph in the end. Men have cured themselves of painful diseases by a herculean effort of the volition, and physicians always count upon a cheerful, hopeful frame of mind in their patients as one of the most important agencies in effecting a restoration to health. Aaron Burr laid aside a wasting fever like a garment, to join the expedition against Quebec. One of the greatest generals of the Thirty Years' War was Torstenson. On account of his sufferings from the gout, he was usually carried about in a litter; yet the

rapidity of his movements was the astonishment of the world. When Douglas Jerrold, being very sick, was told by his physician that he must die, "What!" he said, "and leave a family of helpless children? I won't die!" and die he did not for several years. When were the prospects of any man gloomier than those of Wolfe just before he captured Quebec? From his early youth he had suffered severely from a fatal disease, and the seeds of others were deep laid in his constitution. He had been severely repulsed in an attack on Montcalm's intrenchments south of Quebec; his troops were dispirited; the promised auxiliaries under Amherst and Johnson had failed to arrive; and he himself, through the fatigue and anxiety preying on his delicate frame, fell violently ill of a fever. tially recovering his health, he writes to the government at home, as if to prepare the public mind in England for his failure or retreat, a letter full of gloom, concluding thus: "I am so far recovered as to do business, but my constitution is entirely ruined, without the consolation of having done any considerable service to the state, or without the prospect of it." Within five days only from the date of that letter, the Heights of Abraham had been scaled, Montcalm defeated, the seemingly impregnable fortress surrendered, and the name of Wolfe had become immortal to all ages!

CHAPTER XV.

THE WILL AND THE WAY (continued).

Pitch thy behavior low, thy projects high,

So shall thou humble and magnanimous be.

Sink not in spirit; who aimeth at the sky

Shoots higher much than he that means a tree.

Kites rise against, not with, the wind. passage anywhere in a dead calm. JOHN NEAL.

GEORGE HERBERT.

No man ever worked his

No man can end with being superior, who will not begin with being inferior. SYDNEY SMITH.

"Les existences foibles vivent dans les douleurs au lieu de les changer en apothègmes d'expérience. Elles s'en saturent et s'usent en retrogradant chaque jour dans les malheurs consommés. Oublier, c'est le grand secret des existences fortes et créatrices, — oublier à la manière de la Nature, qui ne se connait point de passé, qui recommence à toute heure les mystères de ses indefatigables enfantements."

A politician weakly and amiably in the right is no match for a politician tenaciously and pugnaciously in the wrong.-E. P. WHIPPLE.

NOT

TOT only perseverance is necessary to worldly success, but patience also, or a willingness to bide one's time. Indeed, of all the lessons that humanity has to learn in this school of the world, the hardest is to wait. Not to wait with folded hands that claim life's prizes without previous effort, but, having toiled and struggled, and crowded the slow years with trial, to see then no results, or perhaps disastrous results, and yet to stand firm, to preserve one's poise, and relax no effort, this, it has been truly said, is greatness, whether achieved by man or woman. The world cannot be circumnavigated by one wind. The grandest results cannot be achieved in a day; the fruits that are best worth plucking usually ripen the most slowly; and therefore every one who would gain a solid success must learn "to labor, and to wait." It is said that a tran