CHAPTER VIII.
THE CONQUEST OF OBSTACLES.
Nature, when she adds difficulties, adds brains.
-- EMERSON.
Exigencies create the necessary ability to meet and conquer them.
-- WENDELL PHILLIPS.
Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous difficulties.
-- SPURGEON.
The rugged metal of the mine Must burn before its surface shine.
-- BYRON.
When a man looks through a tear in his own eye, that is a lens which opens reaches in the unknown, and reveals orbs no telescope could do.
-- BEECHER.
No man ever worked his way in a dead calm.
-- JOHN NEAL.
"Kites rise against, not with, the wind." Then welcome each rebuff, That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting, that bids not sit nor stand, but go.
-- BROWNING.
"What a fine profession ours would be if there were no gibbets!" said one of two highwaymen who chanced to pass a gallows.

"Tut, you blockhead," replied the other, "gibbets are the making of us; for, if there were no gibbets, every one would be a highwayman." Just so with every art, trade, or pursuit; it is the difficulties that scare and keep out unworthy competitors.
"Life," says a philosopher, "refuses to be so adjusted as to eliminate from it all strife and conflict and pain.

There are a thousand tasks, that, in larger interests than ours, must be done, whether we want them or no.

The world refuses to walk upon tiptoe, so that we may be able to sleep.

It gets up very early and stays up very late, and all the while there is the conflict of myriads of hammers and saws and axes with the stubborn material that in no other way can be made to serve its use and do its work for man.