pours its vengeance upon the fair plantation below, leaving wreck and ruin
in its path, bestows a wealth of sulphur which plays an important part in
the world of commerce. The same frost that kills the harvest of a season
also destroys the locust, preserving the harvests of a century. The death
of the cocoon is the production of the silk, and the failure of the
caterpillar the birth of the butterfly. If the boy Newton had not failed
utterly on the farm, he would never have been started in college to become
the mighty man of science. The fall of Rome meant the rise of the German
Empire. "All men," says Frederick Arnold, "need through errors attain to
truth, through struggles to victory, through regrets to that sorrow which
is a very source of life. Men must rise in an ever-ascending scale, like
the ladder of St. Augustine, by which men, through stepping-stones of
their dead selves rise to higher things; or those steps of Alciphron,
which crumbled away into nothingness as fast as each foot-fall left
them." Thus our very failures we may overrule and convert into
stepping-stones to success. Lifted to a loftier sphere, to a nobler
experience, we are apt to receive greater benefit than though we escaped
disappointment and rejoiced in easy fruition.

Success does not consist in not encountering difficulties, but in
overcoming them. If Jason is to have the golden fleece he must pass
between the dangerous rocks, he must encounter the dragon, yoke to the
plow the fire-breathing bulls, and subdue a regiment of armed men. If
Joseph had not been Egypt's prisoner, he would never have been Egypt's
governor. If Millet had not passed through the valley of sorrow, he could
never have painted the "Angelus." The Restoration in England that gave
Charles II a throne, drove Milton into absolute seclusion, and the last
twelve years of his life were passed in enforced isolation. But this
blind, deserted, broken-hearted, but illustrious scholar and poet,
conquered despair, triumphed over every misfortune, and gave to the world