OVERCOMING HANDICAPS OVERCOMING HANDICAPS BY ARCHER WALLACE _Author of_ “STORIES OF GRIT,” “CANADIAN HEROES OF MISSION FIELDS OVERSEAS” WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY REV. FRANK LANGFORD, B. A. Secretary of the Board of Religious Education of the United Church of Canada [Illustration] GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC. 1929 COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY OVERCOMING HANDICAPS PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA INTRODUCTION Did you ever feel utterly discouraged over your failure to master some subject at school? Or have you lost nearly all of your interest in school studies because some of your fellow-students could outstrip you in spite of your best efforts? Well, those circumstances may be discouraging, all right, but would it not be still worse if you had no chance to go to school at all, or if you had to work hard all day with your hands, and then snatch such education as you could get by attending classes for a couple of hours each evening? That is the way some boys had to do, and yet they got an education, and a good one, so that they became great and successful men. Read the stories of some of them in this book, and see how great were the handicaps they overcame. What do you suppose it would be like to leave home, and find yourself all alone in a great city where you had never been before? Worse still, suppose you were surrounded by a gang of lads about your own age or older, who seemed bent on making your life as miserable as possible. To complete the story of difficulties, imagine yourself entirely ignorant of the language spoken in that city. What would you do? If you had the right kind of stuff in you, you might get along as well as did some of the young fellows in the stories in this book. Remember, these stories tell of real people, who actually did face difficulties, so you may rest assured that what they did, you could do too. You will be surprised to find out how much like yourselves these men were. Some of them were poor, some were without friends, some had no education, some were weak lads physically, some had hot tempers--in short, they were very much like most of us. How did such ordinary boys become great men? Why, it is to answer that question that this book was written. The author has given us a living picture of each of them in such interesting fashion that we become acquainted with the boy, we watch him grow up, and we see how he won his success.