pressly with a view to his own improvement. Sir Robert Peel began when a boy to cultivate those abilities which, though only mediocre, made him one of the weightiest speakers in the House of Commons. When he was quite a child, his father used frequently to set him upon the table, and say, "Now, Robin, make a speech, and I will give you this cherry." What few words the little fellow produced were applauded, and applause, stimulating exertion, produced such effects that before he was ten years old he could really address the company with some degree of eloquence. As he grew up, his father constantly took him every Sunday into his private room, and made him repeat as much as he could of the sermon he had heard. Little progress was made at first; but by steady perseverance the habit of attention grew powerful, and the sermon was repeated at last almost verbatim. When many years afterwards he replied in succession to the arguments of his parliamentary opponents, stating each with extraordinary fulness and accuracy, it was little suspected that the power to do so had been acquired, under his father's training, in Drayton church.

America has probably produced no greater orator than Henry Clay. Though endowed with great natural gifts, he was no exception to the rule that orator fit. He attributed his success to the one single fact that at the age of twenty-seven he began, and continued for years, the practice of daily reading and speaking upon the contents of some historical and scientific book. "These off-hand efforts," he says, (6 were made sometimes in a cornfield, at others in the forest, and not unfrequently in some distant barn, with the horse and ox for my auditors. It is to this early practice in the great art of all arts that I am indebted for the primary and leading impulses that stimulated me forward, and shaped and moulded my subsequent entire destiny. Improve, then, young gentlemen, the superior advantages you here enjoy. Let not a day pass without exercising your powers of speech. There is no power like

that of oratory. Cæsar controlled men by exciting their fears ; Cicero, by captivating their affections and swaying their pas

sions. The influence of the one perished with its author; that of the other continues to this day." Henry Ward Beecher, when a theological student, was drilled incessantly by a skilful elocutionist in posturing, gesture, and voice-culture. There was a large grove between the seminary and his father's house, and it was the habit, he tells us, of his brother Charles and himself, and one or two others, to make the night, and even the day, hideous with their voices, as they passed backward and forward through the wood, exploding all the vowels from the bottom to the very top of their voices. It is said that the greatest sermon ever preached by Dr. Lyman Beecher, the father of Henry, one of the most powerful pulpit orators in America, was one on "The Government of God." When asked, as he descended the pulpit steps, how long it took him to prepare that sermon, he replied, "About forty years, sir."

It cannot be too often repeated that all extraordinary skill is the result of vast preparatory training. Facility of every kind comes by labor. Nothing is easy, not even walking or reading, that was not difficult at first. Emerson tersely says: "All the great speakers were bad speakers at first. Stumping it through England for seven years made Cobden a consummate debater. Stumping it through New England for twice seven years. trained Wendell Phillips. The way to learn German is to read the same dozen pages over and over a hundred times, till you know every word and particle in them, and can pronounce and repeat them by heart. No genius can recite a ballad at first reading so well as mediocrity can at the fifteenth or twentieth reading. The rule for hospitality and Irish 'help' is, to have the same dinner every day throughout the year. At last Mrs. O'Shaughnessy learns to cook it to a nicety, the host learns to carve it, and the guests are well served. A humorous friend of mine thinks that the reason why Nature is so perfect in her art, and gets up such inconceivably fine sunsets, is that she has learned how, at last, by dint of doing the same thing so very often. Cannot one converse better on a topic in which he has experience than on one which is new? Men whose

opinion is valued on 'Change are only such as have a special experience, and off that ground their opinion is not valuable.”

But little reflection is needed to satisfy us that it is for wise purposes that Providence has established the inexorable decree that intense toil shall be the price of all rare excellence or success. Men are so constituted as to think lightly of, and even despise, that which it has cost them but a slight effort to win. When the maiden is too forward, her lover deems it time to draw back. Besides, there would be no exclusiveness in excellence, nothing to distinguish it, or make it peculiarly desirable, if it could be too cheaply purchased. It is told of two highwaymen, that, chancing once to pass a gibbet, one of them, with an ill-boding sign, exclaimed, "What a fine profession ours would be if there were no gibbets!" "Tut! you blockhead," replied the other, "gibbets are the making of us; for, if there were no gibbets, every one would be a highwayman.” Just so with every art, trade, or pursuit; it is the difficulties that scare and keep out unworthy competitors. What Jean Paul Richter said of poverty, writing to a friend at the very time when he was in the clutches of a remorseless creditor, is true of many a trial in life. "What is poverty," said he, "that a man should whine under it? It is but the pain of piercing the ears of the maiden, and you hang precious jewels in the wound." Even the dreariest tasks, like the ugly toad with the jewel in its head, have some redeeming circumstances that cheat them of their repulsiveness. "The ugliest trades," says Douglas Jerrold, "have their moments of pleasure. Now if I were a grave-digger, or a hangman, there are some people I could work for with a great deal of enjoyment."

In conclusion, we would say to every man who wishes to get on in the world, in the words of the poet Holmes,

CHAPTER XVI.

RESERVED POWER.

A man so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that as a mechanism it is capable of, whose intellect is a clear, cold logic-engine, with all its parts of equal strength and in smooth working order, ready like a steam-engine to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind. HUXLEY.

Every person represents something, stands for something. At least, he represents a value antecedently created in his own character. As was said of Bias, the wise Greek, himself is the treasure that a whole life has gathered. He stands for the wealth of being that a thousand struggles have contributed to form. — REV. F. D. HUNTINGTON, D. D.

It is told of Hercules, god of real force, that "whether he stood, or walked, or sat, or whatever thing he did, he conquered." — IB.

N the great international boat-race which occurred some years

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ago on the Thames between the clubs of Harvard and Oxford, the boat manned by the former took the lead almost from the start. Rowing forty-six strokes to the minute, while their adversaries rowed but forty-two, the Harvard men were soon half a length, next a whole length ahead, and, to a superficial observer, seemed likely to win the race. But presently the pace sinks to forty and thirty-nine; foot by foot, and inch by inch, the men of the dark-blue colors, with the slow, steady, ponderous swing of their oars, creep up on their adversaries; the men of the crimson colors strain every sinew to its tension, fighting every inch of the way; but lo! suddenly their stroke, hitherto so impetuous, begins to slacken and look distressed; their opponents are steadily pulling forty strokes a minute to their thirty-nine or less; a few minutes more, and Oxford moves victoriously ahead, and, in spite of the last desperate "spurts" of Harvard, maintains her superiority to the goal, and the race is won.

A great many explanations have been given of Harvard's defeat, but is it not evident that the main cause was a lack of that vital element in all contests and struggles, that element which Americans are so apt to despise or neglect, namely, reserved power? Is it not true that, not only in boat-races, but everywhere, in all the intellectual and moral contests of life,

in the commercial mart, in the senate, in the pulpit, and in the forum, men fail of success from early exhaustion, from a lack of that accumulated force, whether physical, mental, or spiritual, which only can qualify them to meet any unexpected draught upon their powers? In the composition of an army, one of the first essentials of effective action is a well-constituted, powerful reserved force. It consists of picked men, trained veterans, with a cool, sagacious commander, who can be thrown at any moment into the very thick of the fight, to sustain a faltering legion, or to turn a doubtful combat into a decisive victory. The lack of such a force, or its lack of numbers and discipline, has often made the difference between a battle won and a battle lost. Who that is familiar with the campaigns of Napoleon does not remember how often the trembling scale was turned, and the exultant legions of the enemy were rolled back, just as victory was about "to sit eagle-winged on their crests,” by the resistless charge of the Imperial Guard? And at Waterloo, when his star went down in darkness, to what mainly was the disaster owing, but to the fact that this reserved force had been diminished and enfeebled by the necessity of repelling the attack on his right flank, so that when he partially broke the British line at La Haye Sainte, he could not follow up his success with a deadly blow?

Life is a warfare: it, too, has its decisive moments, when success or failure, victory or defeat, must hinge upon our reserved power. At the bar, in the senate, in the pulpit, in the fields of business, in every sphere of human activity, he only organizes victory and commands success behind whose van and corps of battle is heard the steady tramp of the army of the It is not enough that the rank and file of our forces

reserve.

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