282 LITTLE BIOGRAPHIES.—HOW SUCCESS IS WON. LITTLE BIOGRAPHIES.—HOW SUCCESS IS WON. By Sarau K. BOLTon. Vv. HENRY M. STANLEY. NCE on a time, had the wise men of the world been asked who were to be the great explorers of modern times, they probably would not have pointed to a factory boy in Scotland, ten years old, working fourteen hours a day, neither to a homeless lad in a Welsh poor-house — David Liv- ingstone and Henry M. Stanley. But we may well say with President Garfield, “ I never meet a ragged boy in the street without feeling that I _ may owe him a salute, for I know not what possi- bilities may be buttoned up under his coat.” We all of us naturally enjoy adventure, and admire heroic adventurers, An unexplored region exerts a strange and drawing fascination upon the most sober-minded of us. The world’s civilization hinges often upon this element in our natures. There is a long, royal line of brave and hardy men who have given money and thought and life to open up new lands and enlighten new races ; but through all the centuries of exploration there has remained, until our own years, a vast, unknown country, covering over eight million square miles — Africa, the Dark Continent. To be sure its Egypt had at one time beeri the centre of the world’s learning; its Alexandria, at the mouth of the Nile, was as beautiful as Imperial Rome until Julius Cesar conquered it, 48 8. c.; but under the rule of the Turks it had gone back into barbarism. To be sure along the east and west coasts the English and the Dutch had opened trading stations, but into the great pagan interior, believed to be in- habited by cannibals, and teeming with natural riches, no traveller had dared venture. It was about one hundred years ago that Eng- land endeavored to send missionaries to the African tribes, but the malarial fevers were invari- ably fatal to life. This was well known to young David Livingstone, when, in the Scottish cotton factory, he resolved to go into the dark and terri- ble country as a missionary. He was twenty-five. ‘He had for years worked from six in the morning until eight at night, his books before him on the loom, that he might study Latin and science while he worked, learning Greek, theology and medicine in his evenings. For the next sixteen years he gave himself to mission work in behalf of the Afric heathen, and to exploration in behalf of the whole world. Beset by strange hardships through tedious and difficult journeys, he penetrated the country, ex- ploring the Zambesi and the lakes. He never felt fear. His manliness and kindliness won him the friendliness of the terrible and pagan peoples. He took constant and sensible care of his health, In the greatest hardship he never re-enforced his strength and spirits with stimulants; water was his only beverage. When he visited home again, England and Scot- land awarded the poor factory boy their greatest honors— medals, gold, and the applause of their Scientific Societies. He soon returned to Africa, however, this time sent by the Government and empowered to suppress the barbarous, the brutal slave-trade in Africa, carried on by Egypt, the Portuguese, and the tribes among themselves. Captured in the interior, these herds of human beings were bound together in gangs, the chains eating into their wrists, and were driven thus to the seacoast to be sold. In two centuries, it is esti- mated that forty million Africans had been sold into slavery. On the death of his wife, the daughter of the Missionary Moffat, Livingstone once more returned to England, where he staid to write his seccnd book, and then started for his last journey in Africa in 1866. He was determined to give the remainder of his life to this mission of Christianity and exploration. He was equipped better than a new man, by every year’s experience. His con- stancy to his youthful purpose never wavered. It was not love of adventure, it was the noble zeal of exploration which had sent him forth in the begin- ning, the only sort of travel that really benefits the world, and is chronicled by history. This time, for three years, nothing was heard from him. The whole world grew anxious. At last, while Royal Societies and Scientific Associ- ations were debating, and Governments were delay- ing, a generous, energetic American, James Gordon Bennett, the owner of the Mew York Herald, re- solved to find Livingstone, be he dead or be he alive. He quietly undertook this at his own ex- pense. The chief question would seem to be, Whom could he send? There was, however, one young man whose dauntless courage and deter- mination he could depend upon: Henry M. Stanley. And who was Henry M. Stanley? Born in 1840, in Wales, at three years of age, this Henry M. Stanley was sent to the poor-house.