This boy with no chance became one of the world's greatest astronomers.
"When I found that I was black," said Alexandre Dumas, "I resolved to live as if I were white, and so force men to look below my skin." How slender seemed the chance of James Sharples, the celebrated blacksmith artist of England! He was very poor, but he often rose at three o'clock to copy books he could not buy.

He would walk eighteen miles to Manchester and back after a hard day's work to buy a shilling's worth of artist's materials.

He would ask for the heaviest work in the blacksmith shop, because it took a longer time to heat at the forge, and he could thus have many spare minutes to study the precious book, which he propped up against the chimney.

He was a great miser of spare moments and used every one as though he might never see another.

He devoted his leisure hours for five years to that wonderful production, "The Forge," copies of which are to be seen in many a home.
What chance had Galileo to win renown in physics or astronomy, when his parents compelled him to go to a medical school?
Yet while Venice slept, he stood in the tower of St.Mark's Cathedral and discovered the satellites of Jupiter and the phases of Venus, through a telescope made with his own hands.