from a tanyard to become the world's greatest general. Thomas A. Edison
commenced as a newsboy on a railway train.

The examples of these men are incentives to action. Poverty thrust them
forward instead of keeping them back. Therefore, if you are poor make
your circumstances a means to an end. Have ambition, keep a goal in sight
and bend every energy to reach that goal. A story is told of Thomas
Carlyle the day he attained the highest honor the literary world could
confer upon him when he was elected Lord Rector of Edinburgh University.
After his installation speech, in going through the halls, he met a
student seemingly deep in study. In his own peculiar, abrupt, crusty way
the Sage of Chelsea interrogated the young man: "For what profession are
you studying?" "I don't know," returned the youth. "You don't know,"
thundered Carlyle, "young man, you are a fool." Then he went on to
qualify his vehement remark, "My boy when I was your age, I was stooped
in grinding, gripping poverty in the little village of Ecclefechan, in
the wilds of [Transcriber's note: Part of word illegible]-frieshire,
where in all the place only the minister and myself could read the Bible,
yet poor and obscure as I was, in my mind's eye I saw a chair awaiting
for me in the Temple of Fame and day and night and night and day I
studied until I sat in that chair to-day as Lord Rector of Edinburgh
University."

Another Scotchman, Robert Buchanan, the famous novelist, set out for
London from Glasgow with but half-a-crown in his pocket. "Here goes,"
said he, "for a grave in Westminster Abbey." He was not much of a
scholar, but his ambition carried him on and he became one of the great
literary lions of the world's metropolis.

Henry M. Stanley was a poorhouse waif whose real name was John Rowlands.