This book aims to furnish encouragement and cheer for those who, even late in life, are anxious to make up, by self-destruction, for the deficiency of a neglected education, and to become larger, broader, truer, and nobler men and women. It intends to show that the secret of every great success has been indomitable resolution and earnest application; to point out how small and mean and common most lives are, in comparison with what they might be.