“I did. But I discovered that real fame—permanent recognition which cannot be taken away from you—is acquired only by a lifetime of most earnest labor. People are never internationally recognized until they have reached middle life. Many persons gain notoriety young, but that goes as quickly as it comes. All true success is founded on real accomplishment, acquired with difficulty; and so, when you see some one accounted great, you will usually find him to be in the prime of life or past it.” “You grant that many young people have genius?” “Certainly I do. Many of them have it. They will have waited long, however, before it has been trained into valuable service. The world gives very little recognition for a great deal of labor paid in; and when I earn a thousand dollars for a half hour’s singing sometimes it does not nearly average up for all the years and for the labor much more difficult, which I contributed without recompense.” BOOK TWO MEN AND WOMEN WHO HAVE ACHIEVED EMINENCE Success Maxims If I were a cobbler, it would be my pride The best of all cobblers to be; If I were a tinker, no tinker beside Should mend an old kettle like me. —OLD SONG. People do not lack strength; they lack will.—VICTOR HUGO. Every man stamps his own value upon himself, and we are great or little according to our own will.—SAMUEL SMILES. The saddest failures in life are those that come from not putting forth of the power and will to succeed.—WHIPPLE. As men in a crowd instinctively make room for one who would force his way through it, so mankind makes way for one who rushes toward an object beyond them.—DWIGHT. There can be no doubt that the captains of industry to-day, using that term in its broadest sense, are men who began life as poor boys.—SETH LOW. Do noble things, not dream them, all day long, And so make life, death and the vast forever one grand, sweet song. —CHARLES KINGSLEY. Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.—FRANKLIN. The high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man, is to be born with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment and happiness.—EMERSON. A man that is young in years may be old in hours, if he have lost no time.—BACON. The one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation; and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine.... Everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and sends us home to add one stroke of faithful work.—EMERSON. [Illustration: Thomas B. Reed William Boyd Allison George F. Hoar Elihu Root Theodore Roosevelt Henry Cabot Lodge Grover Cleveland (_Copyright, 1903, by Rockwood, N.Y._) John Hay Richard Olney STATESMEN] [Illustration: Sir T. Shaughnessy Sir Wm. Van Horne Lord Strathcona