human heart, and it is the struggle of life to conquer the bad with
the good.' What I am trying to say is, that if I am worthy any one's
confidence to-day, it is because, having seen that truth, I have
been able, through never ceasing trying, through slow conquering, to
crowd out some of the bad and make room for a little of the good.

"You see," he went on, three hundred pairs of eyes hard upon him
now, "some of us are born to a harder struggle than others. There
are people who would object to my saying that to you, even if I
believed it. They would say you would make the fact of being born
with much against which to struggle an excuse for being bad. But
look here a minute; if you were born with a body not as strong as
other boys' bodies, if you couldn't run as far, or jump as high, you
wouldn't be eternally saying, 'I can't be expected to do much; I
wasn't born right.' Not a bit of it! You'd make it your business to
get as strong as you could, and you wouldn't make any parade of the
fact that you weren't as strong as you should be. We don't like
people who whine, whether it's about weak bodies or weak souls.

"I've been sitting here this afternoon wondering what to say to you
boys. I had intended telling some funny stories about things which
happened to me when I was a boy. But for some reason a serious mood
has come over me, and I don't feel just like those stories now. I
haven't been thinking of the funny side of life in the last
half-hour. I've been thinking of how much suffering I've endured
since the days when I, too, was a boy."

He paused then; and when he went on his voice tested to the utmost
the silence of the room: "There is lots of sorrow in this old world.
Maybe I'm on the wrong track, but as I see it to-day human beings