A good chance alone is nothing.  Education is nothing without strong and vigorous resolution and stamina to make one accomplish something in the world.  An encouraging start is nothing without backbone.  A man who cannot stand erect, who wabbles first one way and then the other, who has no opinion of his own, or courage to think his own thought, is of very little use in this world.  It is grit, it is perseverance, it is moral stamina and courage that govern the world.

At the trial of the seven bishops of the Church of England for refusing to aid the king to overthrow the Protestant faith, it was necessary to watch the officers at the doors, lest they send food to some juryman, and aid him to starve the others into an agreement.  Nothing was allowed to be sent in but water for the jurymen to wash in, and they were so thirsty they drank it up.  At first nine were for acquitting, and three for convicting.  Two of the minority soon gave way; the third, Arnold, was obstinate.  He declined to argue.  Austin said to him, “Look at me.  I am the largest and the strongest of the twelve; and before I will find such a petition as this libel, here will I stay till I am no bigger than a tobacco pipe.”  Arnold yielded at six in the morning.

SUCCESS AGAINST ODDS.

     Yes, to this thought I hold with firm persistence;
       The last result of wisdom stamps it true: 
     He only earns his freedom and existence
       Who daily conquers them anew.
     Goethe.

“It is interesting to notice how some minds seem almost to create themselves,” says Irving, “springing up under every disadvantage, and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles.”  Opposing circumstances create strength.  Opposition gives us greater power of resistance.  To overcome one barrier gives us greater ability to overcome the next.  History is full of examples of men and women who have redeemed themselves from disgrace, poverty, and misfortune, by the firm resolution of an iron will.

Success is not measured by what a man accomplishes, but by the opposition he has encountered, and the courage with which he has maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds.  Not the distance we have run, but the obstacles we have overcome, the disadvantages under which we have made the race, will decide the prizes.

“It is defeat,” says Henry Ward Beecher, “that turns bone to flint, and gristle to muscle, and makes men invincible, and formed those heroic natures that are now in ascendency in the world.  Do not, then, be afraid of defeat.  You are never so near to victory as when defeated in a good cause.”

Governor Seymour of New York, a man of great force and character, said, in reviewing his life:  “If I were to wipe out twenty acts, what should they be?  Should it be my business mistakes, my foolish acts (for I suppose all do foolish acts occasionally), my grievances?  No; for, after all, these are the very things by which I have profited.  So I finally concluded I should expunge, instead of my mistakes, my triumphs.  I could not afford to dismiss the tonic of mortification, the refinement of sorrow; I needed them every one.”