Napoleon Hill

In the city of Chicago lives a beautiful young woman. Her eyes are a light blue. Her complexion is extremely fair. She has a sweet charming voice. She is educated and cultured. Three days after graduating in one of the colleges of the East she discovered that she had negro blood in her veins.

The man to whom she was engaged refused to marry her. The negroes do not want her and the whites will not associate with her. During the remainder of her life she must bear the brand of permanent FAILURE.

Remember, this is PERMANENT failure!

As this essay is being written news comes of a beautiful girl baby who was born to an unwed girl and taken into an orphanage, there to be brought up mechanically, without ever knowing the influence of a mothers love.

All through life this unfortunate child must bear the brunt of another's mistake which can never be corrected. How fortunate are YOU, no matter what may be your imaginary failures, that you are not this child.

If you have a strong body and a sound mind you have much for which you ought to be thankful. Millions of people all about you have no such blessings.

Careful analysis of one hundred men and women whom the world has accepted as being great shows that they were compelled to undergo hardship and temporary defeat and failure such as YOU probably have never known and never will know.

Woodrow Wilson went to his grave altogether too soon, the victim of cruel slander and disappointment, believing, no doubt, that he was a FAILURE. TIME, the great miracle worker that rights all wrongs and turns failure into success, will place the name of Woodrow Wilson at the top of the page of the really great.

Few now living have the vision to see that out of Wilson's FAILURE will come, eventually, such a powerful demand for universal peace that war will be an impossibility.

Lincoln died without knowing that his FAILURE gave sound foundation to the greatest nation on this earth. Columbus died, a prisoner in chains, without ever knowing that his FAILURE meant the discovery of the great nation which Lincoln and Wilson helped to preserve, with their FAILURES.

Do not use the word FAILURE carelessly. Remember, carrying a burdensome cross temporarily is not FAILURE. If you have the real seed of success within you, a little adversity and temporary defeat will only serve to nurture that seed and cause it to burst forth into maturity.