The shelves of his pantry were then broken up and thrown into the furnace; and the great burst of heat melted the enamel.

The grand secret was learned.

Persistence had triumphed again.
"If you work hard two weeks without selling a book," wrote a publisher to an agent, "you will make a success of it." "Know thy work and do it," said Carlyle; "and work at it like a Hercules." "Whoever is resolved to excel in painting, or, indeed, in any other art," said Reynolds, "must bring all his mind to bear upon that one object from the moment that he rises till he goes to bed." "I have no secret but hard work," said Turner, the painter.
"The man who is perpetually hesitating which of two things he will do first," said William Wirt, "will do neither.

The man who resolves, but suffers his resolution to be changed by the first counter-suggestion of a friend--who fluctuates from opinion to opinion, from plan to plan, and veers like a weather-cock to every point of the compass, with every breath of caprice that blows,--can never accomplish anything great or useful.

Instead of being progressive in anything, he will be at best stationary, and, more probably, retrograde in all." Perseverance built the pyramids on Egypt's plains, erected the gorgeous temple at Jerusalem, inclosed in adamant the Chinese Empire, scaled the stormy, cloud-capped Alps, opened a highway through the watery wilderness of the Atlantic, leveled the forests of the new world, and reared in its stead a community of states and nations.