Demosthenes was born with a faulty utterance and with a hollow chest. Nevertheless, he conceived a great desire to be an orator. Most men would have found their physical unfitness a sufficient handicap to discourage them from any effort. Demosthenes determined to overcome the hindrances which had been born with him. He sought a remote and secluded place, shaved his head in order that he might not soon venture back among his friends, and exercised his voice and body until the weakness of both had been overcome. All the world is familiar with the final results of his efforts. On the day when Demosthenes was uttering the amazing words which so tellingly advocated his right to receive a crown at the hands of his fellow citizens, the explanation of his achievement did not lie in his birth. It lay rather in the fact that he had willed to overcome the limitations with which nature had surrounded him. It is true that he had seized a psychological moment, but he was able to seize that moment because he had not feared the long period of painstaking effort which had been necessary to overcome his handicaps. The secret of his success was not opportunity, but toil. He had merely refused to surrender to the forces which would have destroyed the usefulness of many men. His triumph was but the result of a task patiently performed in spite of its difficulty. During the last century, Spain produced a remarkable artist in the person of Daniel Vierge. He attained eminence in his work while still a young man. At the early age of thirty, however, he suffered complete paralysis of the right side. It would have been easy to have admitted that his work with the brush and pencil was done, and to have resigned himself to what seemed to be a hard fate. Such was not his spirit, however. He had no intention of relinquishing the tools of his art. He still had the use of his left arm, and he determined that it should be trained to possess the power which the other had lost. The long and tedious period of training had to be gone through again. He accomplished his task, however, and in spite of the difficulty which he had encountered he learned to draw nearly as well with his left hand as he had ever been able to do with the other. By making the most of the one resource which was left to him, he managed to retain his place in the front rank of his profession as an illustrator. The work which he produced after his affliction can scarcely be distinguished in quality from his earlier efforts.