range of mountains, that vast barrier that seems to separate California from the rest of the world. The people practically said, "You are a fool to think of such a thing," but he calmly replied: “I know I can put a road through; I am going to try it anyhow." So he began to climb those mountain heights. He threaded the passes one by one. He took his men and they worked day after day, week after week, month after month, upon what seemed to be an impossibility.

What was the result? He kept at it until he achieved. He made his plans and made them so well that he ultimately succeeded in convincing the House of Representatives and the United States Senate that such a railroad was possible.

Then four men, Huntington, Crocker, Stanford, and Hopkins, determined to build the road that he had surveyed. Again the pessimists said: "It is impossible; you will never raise the money to build a railroad over the Sierra Nevadas." But the four men worked away, and little by little got the money. As they built they were harassed on every hand. Labor troubles in those days were terrible. The President of the company said, “I don't know what we are going to do." Crocker, the man who had undertaken to see after the actual building of the road, said: "I know what I am going to do; I am going to get help to build that railroad somewhere." And so he sent a man to China to

These were

secure a lot of Chinese laborers. brought to this country, and the result was that with those Chinamen, in defiance of the President of his company, who had said that Chinamen should not be employed, Crocker built the railroad. And now you can cross the Sierra Nevada range without a thought of care because of the dominant, insistent will of that man and his associates.

99

66

you

Do you want to be
Do you want to do

The fact of the matter is, if you are going to achieve anything in life you will have to be " drivers you will have to keep at it until you succeed. You will have to be a slave driver, and yourself will be the slave, willingly, gladly, joyously, of your own purpose. a slave to your own purpose? the things that you have willed to do? Some of us get the idea that bondage- to be bound to anything is always an unpleasant thing. Not at all! Bind yourself to a high and noble purpose. Make yourself a slave to it in the sense of conscientiously sticking to it. Now drive yourself, and compel yourself to go ahead and do that which you have determined to do.

When I think of the old pioneers who walked and rode across this country to reach California; when I think of the many dangers, difficulties, and hardships that faced those men; when I see that they were living illustrations of this thought I am trying to bring out I wish I had only time and

space to give a definite account, instead of a mere synopsis of the kind of things they had to endure. They were surrounded by hostile Indians; again and again their lives were in jeopardy. Now and then they came to great sloughs and marshes, and their wagons and animals were bogged. They had to find their way across the dangerous quicksands; hard storms came and they had whirlwinds and floods to contend with. Now and again they found themselves in the heart of canyons, where there was no apparent way out; yet they went on, and on, until they either died or reached the land for which they had started!

A party of eighty set out to cross the great Sierra Nevada range, and the difficulties they encountered can best be imagined when I tell you that forty of them died on the way. The difficulties that beset the forty that were left made it all but impossible for them to get out. One of them told me about the terrible hardships they suffered. She said, "I remember, distinctly, when the time came for us to get away, my dear mother taking up the baby, and leaving me behind with the other baby. She said, 'Now, Virginia, you stay right here!' She then went on with the baby, and, after struggling step by step, in such a way that it would break your heart to think of it, for about twenty paces, she put down the baby and came back for the other baby and myself." And so, step by step,

step by step, that woman with her three little children, started on that awful journey of scores of miles through deep snow. Fortunately help came to her assistance and she finally achieved. She reached California, though one would have thought it absolutely impossible. There was the tremendous insistence of the human will.

Let us say "I will!" and then insist upon doing the things we have said we will do.

I remember when I was a boy hearing some one recite something that I thought was very foolish. A little piece of " poetry " it was called. It was as follows:

Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on!
Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on!
Go on, go on, go on!

I have since learned that there is a great deal in that "poem."

CHAPTER XIV

RADIANCIES OF CHEERFULNESS

I WANT to be cheerful and to radiate cheerful

ness at all times, under all circumstances, in all conditions and places. I want to do this because I want to do it. Not because it is my duty, or because I shall make some one else unhappy if I do not, but merely and simply because there is a great joy in the fact of cheerfulness itself.

I have a friend into whose presence I never come without feeling the radiant cheerfulness of his nature. His face lights up with a beautiful smile, his hand is immediately stretched out and my hand grasped with a cordial clasp; kind words come to his lips with a sincerity that one can never question, and in the most unaffected, genuine, and simple manner he radiates the cheerfulness and gladness of his own soul.

Did you never meet with such people who were always bright and sunny, who always gave forth a cheery word, always radiated optimism? Everything they say or do makes you feel with Browning: