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Many boyhood he had a weak voice

Many men, when a difficult talk is put before them, sit down with their arms folded and despair of accomplishing it. Yet the very task.

Which through weakness of will they shrink from attempting, is successfully performed by other men, who are not at all supe­rior to them in intellectual or physical power, but are endowed with superior resolution. Hundreds of instances may be brought forward to illustrate the immense power of the will in overcoming obstacles. The biog­raphy of almost every eminent man shows that a strong will is as important as a powerful intellect for the achievement of success in life. Out of the large number of instances that suggest them­selves, one of the most striking is Demosthenes, the Athenian. In his boyhood he had a weak voice and stammered. These physical defects to an ordinary man would have seemed to be insuperable obstacles in the way of oratorical success. But Demosthenes de­termined to be a great public speaker, and found a way to over­come the disadvantages under which he laboured.

He cured him­self of stammering by speaking with pebbles in his mouth. He strengthened his weak voice by reciting aloud as he ran up steep hills, and by declaiming on the sea-shore, so that the struggle with the roar of the waves might train him to make his voice audible in the tumultuous popular assemblies of Athens. Thus by dint of sturdy determination he found a way to conquer the obstacles that nature had placed in the way of his oratorical career, and the weak-voiced boy became the greatest of Greek orators, perhaps the greatest orator that the world has ever heard. Yet his career, while it exemplifies the power of the human will in overcoming difficulties, at the same time shows that there are limits to its power. Demosthenes also willed to save the liberties of Athens and Greece, that were threatened by Philip of Macedon.

He devoted to this patriotic work his great genius, and strove with all the strength of his will to accomplish it. But in this he failed, for his untiring energy, political foresight, and elo­quence were not equal to the task of rousing his countrymen to a full sense of their perilous position.

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