In one of his books Norman Vincent Peale tells about a ragged newsboy years ago in Chicago who displayed great determination. This young fellow used to huddle on a sidewalk grating near the Chicago Tribune building because the flow of heat from the presses operating in the basement kept him warm. From that vantage point, the boy could see well-dressed men and women going into a theatre across the street where brilliant lights on the marquee spelled out the evening’s attraction. He decided one cold night that someday he would be that attraction himself, and to record the birth of this impossible dream he took a rusty nail and scratched his name and the date on the concrete windowsill behind the grating.

The years passed, and the dream did not die, and the day came when the ragged newsboy, now attired in white tie and tails, held the crowds that came to the theater spellbound with the most astounding array of magical tricks the stage had ever seen. He was Howard Thurston, the great magician, and sometimes he would take his friends and show them the name and date dimly scratched on the concrete windowsill so many years before.

– Power of the Plus Factor (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1987). From the folks at http://www.goodstories.com

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