It has been said that the best ages of the world, the best hours of history, are in touch with the periods of struggle. And we turn to the lives of men and women whose hair is whitened with age, and whose bodies have become infirm by disease, to find some of the most inspiring examples of human achievements. It requires a storm of thunder and lightning and wind to purify the air and make perfect the purpose of simmer. Time and again it has taken the weight of years, or an invalidism born of disease or of accident, or of natural defects of body, to bring out the highest qualities of manhood and womanhood. It is worth remembering that "no portion of Paul's wonderful career was productive of more solid results than the years of his imprisonment at Rome."

General Grant's greatest victory was not won in his forties at Donelson, nor at Vicksburg, nor at Appomattox. His most heroic days were spent in his sixties, among the moaning pines on the summit of Mt. McGregor when he was battling with a painful disease. The record of those days forms one of the most pathetic chapters in American biography. It not only illustrates the sublime courage and purpose of the man, but teaches us how to strengthen the things which remain and to make the most of what is.

It will be remembered that in 1883 General Grant invested all his savings in a banking business in New York City, organized under the firm name of Grant & Ward. The General had no business training, he knew nothing whatever of the art of money-making, and being very confiding, he was easily imposed upon by designing persons. He could save a nation, but could not save himself and family from the unblushing rascality of his partner who wrecked the bank in May, 1884. By this event, Grant was plunged into financial ruin. Having nothing left with which to support his family, he left.

was urged by book publishers to begin at once the preparation of his Personal Memoirs, which shrewd bookmen readily saw would give him a comfortable fortune.

At that time General Grant was a little over sixty-two years old - just in the prime of his mature manhood. He started to work on his Memoirs in the summer of 1884, but hardly had he put pen to paper before he began to suffer from a persistent irritation in his throat. A month later physicans discovered that cancer had began its deadly work at the root of the tongue. But this soldier of iron will, of marvellous self-reliance, of physical and moral courage equal to any emergency, patiently and bravely put himself to the task of writing the record of his life. His chief purpose in making this fight against pain and disease was, that after he had passed away his wife might not become an object of charity, nor dependent upon the generosity of the American Congress for support General Grant wrote as rapidly as his sufferings, and a careful examination of official documents, would permit. It was a race between death and his endurance.

In the winter of his life, when the sea of trouble rolled fiercely against him, his courage and hope shone above the storm like the cliff in Goldsmith's grand simile in "The Deserted Village":

"As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,

Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm.

Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,

Eternal sunshine settles on its head."

General Grant's disease became so alarming that on the sixteenth of June, 1885, he was removed to the cottage of Joseph Wilhelm Drexel, on Mt. McGregor, near Saratoga, New York. Two days after his arrival at the cottage, he wrote on a card these pathetic words: "It is just a week to-day since I have spoken. My suffering is continuous." But this did not cause his pen to lag. It is said that he composed more matter in the eight weeks following the first of May, 1885, than in any other eight weeks of his life. During the two months prior to his death, he wrote fifty pages of the book in as many days. On the first of July, he worked continuously four hours, and on the second, three hours. Hovering between life and death, in almost constant agony, and speechless from disease, this heroic soul patiently struggled through his daily task, and laid down his pen only when the book was completed - four days before he fell asleep, Thursday, July twenty-third, 1885.

General Grant's purpose was accomplished. He fought a good fight, he finished his course, he kept the faith. The sales of the work in two volumes were enormous. In less than two years after he died, Mrs. Grant received $395,000 as her share of the sales of Personal Memoirs, and later her share readied $500,000.

Such a successful literary undertaking, produced while the author was in the unrelenting grasp of disease and past three-score years, can find no parallel in history.