But that day as they were hunting, a mistake was made. The father's gun went off and the son was shot, two of the little bullets going straight through the young man's spectacles and into his eyes. Otherwise, he was not seriously injured, but from that moment he was blind.

At once, the man determined that the accident should make no difference. He would take the world with that handicap, and make the best of it. He would not allow his blindness to hinder either his happiness or his efficiency, therefore he continued his interest in athletics. He walked, climbed, rowed, and skated. And he continued his studies by having books and papers read to him.

Presently, he wrote so wise a book on political economy that he was appointed professor of that subject at the University of Cambridge, where he had been a student. But he kept his old determination to be a member of parliament. He went about making speeches; he debated public questions. He told people to make no allowance whatever for his blindness. "I purpose,"

he said, "to enter all contests on a basis of equality."

At the age of thirty-two he won an election. He was now in parliament. He continued his studies and worked hard. He took up matters of public welfare. He interested himself in savings banks, in public schools, in the preservation of forests. At last, Gladstone asked him to be postmaster-general of England.

Thus Henry Fawcett found himself. He became one of the greatest postmastersgeneral in English history. He brought the express business and the telegraph business of the whole country into the postoffice.

It is remembered of him that during the days of his greatest activity, he wrote to his father and mother twice a week. When he died he was one of the best-loved men in England, and the working people raised a great fund of money for his widow by giving only a penny apiece. In the face of difficulty, Henry Fawcett went on day by day, and conquered.

THE MAN WITH THE HOE

Written after seeing Millet's famous painting

BOWED by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,

And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never
hopes,

Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?

Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw? Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?

Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?

O masters, lords, and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-
quenched?

How will you ever straighten up this shape;
Touch it again with immortality;

Give back the upward looking and the

light;

Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?

O masters, lords, and rulers in all lands, How will the Future reckon with this Man? How answer his brute question in that hour When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the

world?

How will it be with kingdoms and with kings

With those who shaped him to the thing he is

When this dumb Terror shall reply to God, After the silence of the centuries?

EDWIN MARKHAM.

THOMAS ALVA EDISON

AL, as young Edison was called by his fellow-workers on the railroad, was a good son to his parents, and delighted to take home to them as much of his earnings as possible. He wanted money with which to buy the chemicals to make his experiments, and having no friends who could assist him pecu