PERSEVERANCE AND THOROUGHNESS.
NOTHING, in the long run, commands a higher reward in the world than perseverance and thoroughness. Here is an incident in point:— A young lad in Pennsylvania who was supporting himself as a stenographer, studied in his leisure time the art of photography. Photography has been a craze for years past with American boys, and tens of thousands of young lads are going about with their cameras taking pictures. Most of them, however, grow tired of the pursuit in a short time, and give it up, without, probably, having made a single creditable picture. But this boy was as anxious and careful with the amusement as if his livelihood depended on it, and studied not only the practice, but the theory, of the art. An exhibition was given in Philadelphia a few years ago of all electrical discoveries and machinery. Among the exhibits was the photograph of a storm. This boy discovered that no one had ever succeeded in photographing a flash of lightning. He resolved to attempt this scientific feat, which was pronounced impossible. The lightning must paint its own likeness, hence the photograph must be taken at night. For two years whenever there was a storm he put on a waterproof and carried his camera to the roof of the house. The prepared plate was put in, and turned to the quarter of the sky from which the flash would probably come. But the lightnings, no more tamed than in the days of Job, will not come at our bidding, and say unto us, "Here we are." The lad watched in the drenching rain upon the house-top through every stormy night for two years, and spoiled one hundred and sixty plates in attempting to catch the evanescent flash. But on the hundred and sixty-first plate there appeared the black sky, riven by a dazzling stream of electric light! For the first time in the history of the world there was a true picture of a flash of lightning. Copies of this picture are now to be found all over the world, and the boy received letters from all scientific men of Europe congratulating him on his success. Audubon, the ornithologist, spent hours every day standing up to the chin in the waters of the bayoux of Louisiana, studying a certain moth. His wife complained that he had thus brought on congestion of the lungs, and permanently injured his health. "Possibly," he said, with indifference. "But there can be now no doubt as to the species of that moth!" We hear much complaint among young men entering life that there is no room for them in any business or profession. There is room in each for zeal and thoroughness, and they never fail to command success and recognition, even in the making of a picture or the study of a moth.—Youth's Companion.