NORTIL SHORE BREEZE 
21 
Character 
Lessons to 
: Train Youth 
By JAMES TERRY WHITE. 
(Copyright, 1909, by the Character Devel- 
opment League.] 
IX.—Perseverance. 
YOUNG girl 
A sat singing 
at the piano. 
“Sing it again,” 
said the singing 
teacher, and the 
tired girl sang it 
again’ and again. 
“But you do not 
sing it properly, 
and I question if 
you will ever make 
a great singer.” 
But the little girl tried hard and 
practiced the next day and the next, 
the next week and the next, the next 
year and the next. One day she stood 
before 5,000 men and women, and she 
gang till she seemed to take them out 
of themselves and to carry them up 
fnto the clouds of enchantment, over 
geas of melody, into an ecstasy of de- 
light, until the people wept from the 
excess of their emotions. That girl 
was Lillian Nordica. 
Anything worth doing is beset with 
@ifficulties. Perseverance consists in 
continuing at any cost. Somebody 
gays, “It is the first step that costs, 
but is it the last step that counts?” 
It is a pertinacity of purpose that 
overcomes all obstacles. It is the 
hinge of all virtues. Perseverance 
means the steady pursuit of a plan. 
Hxcessive difficulties should least of 
all discourage, because the things’ best 
worth achieving are surrounded by 
conditions the most difficult to sur- 
mount. We must overcome a stub- 
born fact by a stubborn will. The 
difficulty frequently measures. the 
worth. It also incites us to the im- 
provement of our methods. 
Perseverance is the grindstone say- 
ing to the ax, “You are hard, but I 
am harder and wi’ wear you away.” 
It is said of Marshall Field that when 
a boy he went to a great merchant and 
asked, “Do you want a boy?” ‘“No- 
body wants a boy,” replied the mer- 
chant. “Do you need a boy?” the boy 
persisted, nowise abashed. “Nobody 
needs a boy,’’ was the reply. But the 
boy would not give up. “Well, say, 
mister, do you have to have a boy?” 
“I think likely we do,” replied the 
JAMES T. WHIT 
merchant, “and 4 ratner think we wu 
have to.have;a boy just like you.” 
To know how to wrest victory from 
defeat and make stepping stones of | 
our stumbling blocks is the secret of 
success. .The difference between per- 
severance and obstinacy is that one 
comes from a strong will and the oth- 
er comes from a strong won't. 
Some of the helps of perseverance 
are: (a) Be sure that while striving 
you .are. gaining good habits and get- 
ting something far better than what 
you. strive for. One gets this in ele- 
mentary work in schools and trades. 
(b) A knowledge that each year of 
faithful perseverance. will transform 
you into an abler person and that you 
can then do easily what is impossible 
to do today. (c) 
Be sure that if the 
work were not dif- 
ficult at the start 
it would not be in- 
teresting. Few sat- 
isfactions are keen- 
er than that of 
perseverance  pa- 
tiently exercised. 
Miss Willard says, 
“Mirs-+t,- then, I 
would give this 
not at all startling 
bit of advice: Keep 
to your specialty, 
to the doing of the thing that you ac- 
complisk with most of satisfaction to 
yourself and most of benefit to those 
about you. Keep to this whether it is 
raising turnips or tunes, painting 
screens or battle pieces.” 
Practice.—When called upon to shell 
peas, sweep the house or do similar 
tasks let each child make up his mind 
that, however tiresome, he will keep on 
working until the work is accomplish- 
LILLIAN NORDICA. 
ed. When apparently insurmountable - 
difficulties arise determine to over- 
come them all by oneself and note the 
satisfaction. 
Literature. 
The sun set, but set not his hope. 
Stars rose, but faith was earlier up. 
—Emerson. 
No rock so hard but that a little wave 
May beat admission in a thousand years. 
—Tennyson. 
The exaltation, the divine 
Insanity of noble minds 
That never falters nor abates, 
But labors and endures and waits 
Till all that it pursues it finds 
Or, what it cannot find, creates. 
—Lonegfellow. 
Climb on! Climb ever! Ne’er despond, 
Though from each summit gained 
There stretch forth ever heights beyond, 
Ideals to be attained. 
, Life’s rescript simply is to climb, 
Unheeding toil and tire. 
Failure hath no attaint of crime 
If we but still aspire. 
—James Terry White. 
It is not the worst thing in the world 
to fail; the worst thing is not to try. 
—Unidentified. 
Drudgery is as necessary to call out 
the treasures of the mind as harrow- 
ing and planting those of the earth. 
—Margaret Fuller. 
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