That seems to be your life and my life. In the kitchen or the office, or wherever we work we seem so often like slaves bound to the oar and pulling under the sting of the lash of necessity. Life seems one futureless round of drudgery. We wonder why. We often look across the street and see somebody who lives a happier life. That one is chained to no oar. See what a fine time they all have. Why must we pull on the oar? How blind we are! We can only see our own oar. We cannot see that they, too, pull on the oar and feel the lash. Most likely they are looking back at us and envying us. For while we envy others, others are envying us. But look at the chariot race in Antioch. See the thousands in the circus. See Messala, the haughty Roman, and see! Ben Hur from the galleys in the other chariot pitted against him. Down the course dash these twin thunderbolts. The thousands hold their breath. "Who will win?" "The man with the stronger forearms," they whisper. There comes the crucial moment in the race. See the man with the stronger forearms. They are bands of steel that swell in the forearms of Ben Hur. They swing those flying Arabians into the inner ring. Ben Hur wins the race! Where got the Jew those huge forearms? From the galleys! Had Ben Hur never pulled on the oar, he never could have won the chariot race. Sooner or later you and I are to learn that Providence makes no mistakes in the bookkeeping. As we pull on the oar, so often lashed by grim necessity, every honest effort is laid up at compound interest in the bank account of strength. Sooner or later the time comes when we need every ounce. Sooner or later our chariot race is on--when we win the victory, strike the deciding blow, stand while those around us fall--and it is won with the forearms earned in the galleys of life by pulling on the oar. That is why I thanked God as I stood at the grave of my classmate. I thanked God for parents who believed in the gospel of struggle, and for the circumstances that compelled it. I am not an example of success. But I am a very grateful pupil in the first reader class of The University of Hard Knocks. Chapter IX Go On South! The Book in the Running Brook THERE is a little silvery sheet of water in Minnesota called Lake Itasca. There is a place where a little stream leaps out from the lake. "Ole!" you will exclaim, "the lake is leaking. What is the name of this little creek?" "Creek! It bane no creek. It bane Mississippi river." So even the Father of Waters has to begin as a creek. We are at the cradle where the baby river leaps forth. We all start about alike. It wabbles around thru the woods of Minnesota. It doesn't know where it is going, but it is "on the way." It keeps wabbling around, never giving up and quitting, and it gets to the place where all of us get sooner or later. The place where Paul came on the road to Damascus. The place of the "heavenly vision."