All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise and wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance: it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united with canals.
If a man was to compare the effect of a single stroke of the pickaxe, or of one impression of the spade, with the general design and last result, he would be overwhelmed by the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations, incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and mountains are leveled, and oceans bounded, by the slender force of human beings.
Barnum began the race of business life barefoot, for at the age of fifteen he was obliged to buy on credit the shoes he wore at his father's funeral. He was a remarkable example of success under difficulties. There was no keeping him down; no opposition daunted him, no obstacles were too great for him to overcome.
Think of a man being ruined at fifty years of age; yes, worse than ruined, for he was heavily in debt besides. Yet on the very day of his downfall he begins to rise again, wringing victory from defeat by his indomitable persistence.
You cannot keep a determined woman or man from success. Place stumbling-blocks in their way and they takes them for stepping-stones, and on them will climb to greatness. Take away his money, and he makes spurs of his poverty to urge him on. Cripple him, and he writes the Waverley Novels. Lock him up in a dungeon, and he composes the immortal "Pilgrim's Progress." Put him in a cradle in a log cabin in the wilderness of America, and in a few years you will find him in the Capitol at the head of the greatest nation on the globe.
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