He wrote a prize essay for the Academy of Lyons, and did not win
the prize. On the contrary, his effort was condemned as
incoherent and poor in style. These were a few failures; enough
to make your ordinary young man throw up his hands and say:
"I've done all I can do; now let the world look out for me."
Just as he became hopeful about the future when he knew that he
had real military genius, he was dismissed from the army, and his
career seemed to be ended. He made the thin soup upon which he
and his brother lived. He could afford to change his shirt only
once a week. He said:
"I breakfasted off dry bread, but I bolted the door on my
poverty."
He kept at it, and all the time, successful or otherwise, he was
developing himself. He developed into an emperor. Young men
will please notice that fact, and the fact that Napoleon worked
and tried under adversity and monotony instead of grumbling.
----
The newspaper reporter who does not get ahead very fast, the
author whose manuscripts are treated as were Napoleon's first
efforts, may study with considerable profit a young American
writer named Richard Harding Davis. That young man had been a
reporter in Philadelphia for seven years when he went to work on
a New York evening newspaper at a small salary.
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