300

In tnese walks, I poured forth my griefs to myself, and
often wept. A classmate called to see me and
told me in a jocular way of a pleasure trip to the Springs,
which had cost him from five hundred to one thousand dol-
lars. Little did he know my feelings at the relation. They
were those of a destitute child, almost starving, yet too proud
to beg or steal.

He was a fine teacher becatise he was naturally
a good disciplinarian and was also genuinely inter-
ested in the progress of his pupils; but at the end
of four months, with broken health, he accepted
a position in a private school. Ah! there was
another reason for his leaving, untold for forty
years, and then only to a single friend. In his
school was a girl of charming disposition, whom
he could not help but love. He had reason to
believe that she was equally fond of him. Poor,
with no profession, so frail in body and health, with
death as he thought in the near future, he could
not ask her to be his wife. Neither could he stay
where she was, and see her day after day; so
crushing all the new and inspiringyhelps of a pure
affection, he hastened away, travelling all night,
breaking his own heart, to render her prospects in
life brighter, he believed, than he could hope to
make them.

In the private school there were thirteen pupils,
for whose tuition he was to receive five hundred
dollars yearly. Ignoring his fragile health, he
admitted several poor lads to the school, without
charge, remembering his own longing for an educa-
tion. The next year, so much did his patrons like
him, he was offered a salary of fifteen hundred
dollars; but his health completely failed, and he
was obliged to return home.

What now was before him? A little money
remained to him and he resolved to study law as
soon as he should becume stronger. Some of the
townspeople “ made fun” of this resolution; he
was so small and boyish — he weighed but seventy
pounds. This stung him to the quick, but he
wrote in his journal :

My soul is bent upon success tu my profession.

You will see he conquered by resolution; not by
chance, nor by dash, but as Wellington and Napo-
leon and Washington and Grant conquered — by the
steady exertion of an iron will. And says he:

No one can imagine how I worked, how I delved, how I
labored over books. Often I spent the whole night over a
law book, and went to bed as the dawn of day was streaking
the east..

He was too, by nature, ambitious. He wrote to
a friend :

I have a restlessness of spirit and ambition of soul which
are urging me on. My desires do not stop short of the high-
est places of distinction. I feel the ragings of ambition like
the sudden burst of the long smothered flames of a volcano.

LITTLE BIOGRAPHIES.—HOW SUCCESS IS WON.

He longed, too, for companionship. Ido wish
I had an associate—a bosom confidant, whose
tastes and views were similar to my own, and whose
business and pursuits were the same,” he said
once; but the student did not find him, and he
turned and bent himself to his solitary work.

The day for examination came, a hot July day,
under a Southern sun. He was nervous, anxious.
But when it was over, the chief lawyers declared
they had never witnessed a better examination,
and the leading lawyer of the county offered him
a partnership, which he declined because he loved
the old home and determined to succeed there.

The first step had been successfully taken ; but
still he knew that for days and weeks he might not
have a case, or anitem of legal business. He was liv-
ing most frugally on six dollars amonth! But the
young lawyer who had his first opening into a fair
future from the Sunday-school, did not forget to
whom to look for help ; for we find in his jonrnal,

July 24:

And now, in the beginning, I do make a fervent prayer
that He who mace me and all things, and who has heretofore
abundantly blessed and favored me, and to whom I wish to
be grateful for all His mercies, may continue them toward
His unworthy servant; that Hé may so overrule my whole
course that a useful success may attend all my efforts.

The next week he attended court some distance
away. He walked ten miles to the house of his
uncle, carrying his saddle-bags on his shoulders,
and there borrowed a horse for the rest of the
journey. When near the town, he stopped in a
pine forest, changed his travel-stained clothes for
a pair of white cotton trousers which might pass
for linen, and appeared among his brother lawyers,
fresh and trim, only able, however, to tarry one
day. For his first address in court he received the
munificent sum of two dollars in silver !

But presently came his first real case, where a
mother asked the restoration of her child which
had been stolen from her by its grandfather. The
Court House and yard were full of people. The
boyish lawyer was unknown and uncared for, but
he had not only carefully thought out his argu-
ments, but had’ declaimed them on a lonely hill-
side. He spoke with all the pathos, tenderness
and conviction of one who having lost a mother,
intuitively knows the depth and power of a mother’s
love and her desolation when she is bereaved.
His great brown eyes filled with tears, his voice
quivered. Even the five judges wept, as they
restored the child to its mother, and “little Aleck
Stephens” took his rank as one of the first orators of
Georgia. Some one there remarked that ‘Stephens
would go to Congress in ten years ;” but he went
before the time they prophesied. ;

But you may be sure that the honor came through
resolution and work. He wrote to his warm friend,