382 NEVER DESPAIR! CHAP. xvm. 



liciting aid when in want, and in endeavouring to 

 conceal his poverty even when in need of help, in 

 order that the world might not know of the misery 

 which himself, his wife, and his family suffered, then 

 he did not hesitate to say that he and his wife were 

 proud. They never refused a kindly gift, but they 

 always refused public charity. 



" Although," he says in a recent letter, " I have 

 not known the pangs of want for some time, thanks 

 to my children, I could scarcely have failed to do so 

 in the years that are past It would have been be- 

 yond the common run of things, if I had not. What 

 working-man, especially what journeyman shoemaker, 

 could have brought up and educated a large family, 

 without at times feeling privation and the pressure of 

 poverty ? There are other trades which have their dull 

 seasons ; but, unlike most other tradesmen, shoemakers 

 are not, from their low pay, able to lay anything by, 

 even when they have plenty of work. And, as a 

 matter of course, this made the struggle, when it did 

 come, all the worse to bear. 



" From these facts and others which I have told 

 you before, I say, and am ready to maintain against 

 every opposition, that no one who steps this earth, or 

 even crawls upon it, need ever despair, after what I 

 have done, of achieving whatever of good they have 

 once set their minds on. Firmness of purpose and 

 the Will to do and dare, will accomplish, I may say, 

 almost anything. The Will is the key that opens the 



