Has not God given every man a capital to start with?  Are we not born rich?  He is rich who has good health, a sound body, good muscles; he is rich who has a good head, a good disposition, a good heart; he is rich who has two good hands, with five chances on each.  Equipped?  Every man is equipped as only God could equip him.  What a fortune he possesses in the marvellous mechanism of his body and mind.  It is individual effort that has achieved everything worth achieving.

THE FUN OF THE LITTLE GAME.

A big Australian, six feet four, James Tyson, died not long since, with a property of $25,000,000, who began life as a farm hand.  Tyson cared little for money.  He used to say of it: 

“I shall just leave it behind me when I go.  I shall have done with it then, and it will not concern me afterwards.  But,” he would add, with a characteristic semi-exultant snap of the fingers, “the money is nothing.  It was the little game that was the fun.”

Being asked, “What was the little game?” he replied with an energy of concentration peculiar to him:  “Fighting the desert.  That has been my work.  I have been fighting the desert all my life, and I have won.  I have put water where was no water, and beef where was no beef.  I have put fences where there were no fences, and roads where there were no roads.  Nothing can undo what I have done, and millions will be happier for it after I am long dead and forgotten.”

Has not self-help accomplished about all the great things of the world?  How many young men falter, faint, and dally with their purpose because they have no capital to start with, and wait and wait for some good luck to give them a lift.  But success is the child of drudgery and perseverance.  It cannot be coaxed or bribed; pay the price, and it is yours.  A constant struggle, a ceaseless battle to bring success from inhospitable surroundings, is the price of all great achievements.

CONQUERORS OF FORTUNE.

Benjamin Franklin had this tenacity of purpose in a wonderful degree.  When he started in the printing business in Philadelphia, he carried his material through the streets on a wheelbarrow.  He hired one room for his office, work-room, and sleeping-room.  He found a formidable rival in the city and invited him to his room.  Pointing to a piece of bread from which he had just eaten his dinner, he said: 

“Unless you can live cheaper than I can, you cannot starve me out.”

It was so that he proved the wisdom of Edmund Burke’s saying, that “He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill:  our antagonist is our helper.”

The poor and friendless lad, George Peabody, weary, footsore, and hungry, called at a tavern in Concord, N.H., and asked to be allowed to saw wood for lodging and breakfast.  Yet he put in work for everything he ever received, and out-matched the poverty of early days.