HOW TO GET STRONG
vidual and national religion; appointed priests, and singers, and poets for religious service; and gathered a vast amount of money and material to erect a great religious temple. If, in a life in the main grand and noble, his mighty passions at times drove him into excesses; no man could be franker or swifter to own that he had done wrong; or to deeply repent of it. Poet and sweet singer of rare power; few men have ever written that which has brought solace to the afflicted and tried, in all ages since, as has this man.
A generation ago, in a beautiful Virginia valley, two great armies met. The night before the Northmen lay on their arms upon Kolps Hill and Cemetery Ridge; Little Round Top and Round Top; on the opposite hill-side, upon Seminary Ridge, lay the Southrons. Each side was 90,000 strong, and was well led; each knew that a struggle was near, so mighty that the fate of a great nation depended on it; and the whole civilized world looking on tried to name the winner. And the "Wheat Field," piled shoulder-high with bodies; and the Devil's Den, where buzzards afterwards, in the crannies of the rocks, picked clean the bones of Southern sharp-shooters, who there in turn had picked off men on Round Top; these, and graceful shafts; and monuments in stone and bronze; and stands of arms; and many a simple slab tell of the three long days of bloody struggle that turned that peaceful valley of Gettysburg into one great slaughter-house—but saved a nation.
Ages ago in another valley, hostile armies met; and again the fate of two nations hung in the balance. A man nearly twice as tall as Bismarck; twice as big-chested as Sullivan; clad in mail strode forward into the open; and thundered out that he would fight any man on the other side. Whoever won, his nation, from then on should be masters; and the loser and his people, their slaves. All heard him. That was easy to do. But no one hurried forward. The king himself was a goodly man—head and shoulders even above the people. But what could he do against a man of almost twice his size? So he refrained. And they all refrained. And they kept up the refrain for some days. When the big man saw this his voice resounded more than before But he spoke once too often. For a short, beardless, red-haired youth who had come up to camp upon an errand, heard him. At once he asked what was the prize. He was told the hand of a princess. He244
