"I can and I will."

"Lives of great men” and of great women as well, "all remind us, we can make our lives sublime." No truth in words impresses us so strongly as the truth in a life. Helen Wilmans' life story is a Bible of Revelations for the age in which we live full of the new thought, the new theology and the divinest inspiration.

Mrs. Wilmans declares that fear is at the bottom of poverty fear of others and distrust of self. She declares: "I have known poverty most thoroughly. I was held in a belief of its power all through the earlier part of my life; I looked to others as my superiors, I was ready to take a place beneath them; I was tortured day and night by actual want." "Then my reasoning powers began to awaken, first on the subject of religion, then on other things and my mind broke its fetters so I began to see the light. I threw off a hundred beliefs considered essential to salvation. I slowly acquired a measure of individuality that enabled me to stand alone."

 Read the story of her life; it is thrilling and most instructively interesting. A farmer's wife, the farm mortgaged and then sold, in poverty, all her possessions in a valise, without money, securing a ride to a town five miles distant, whence with $10 borrowed money, wrenched by mental force from a shoemaker, she proceeds to 'Frisco, spends her capital, fasts three days, refuses though hungry any work or job, save what she has set her heart upon, newspaper work, which at last she secures it at $6.00 a week then loses gains another place. Then one day she throws down her pen and marches out of the office, determined to serve others no longer, she stands alone in the sleet and snow of the street, her sole capital 25 cents and her own self-reliance, and resolves to found a newspaper of her own. She goes home and the boarding housekeeper, suspicious of her early return, asks:
"Have you been discharged by the chief?"
"No," she answers, "I have discharged the chief."
"Is your bread and butter assured?" he asks.
"My bread and butter are assured," she answers.

 "How?" he asks.
"I am going to found a paper and it is a success before it is born. Listen and I'll read you my first editorial." Then she read him her editorial on "I", and he sat listening to the burning enthusiasm and the ringing clarion tones of freedom and aggressiveness, till his soul was on fire and his face illumined and he cried out: "I'll gamble on you. I have $20,000 in the bank. You can draw on every dollar if you like."
She refused, but asked him to wait for a short time for her board bill. Three days later when $7.00 came in, they danced with joy around the table till the dishes were scattered and broken.
Then followed more subscriptions, donations, appreciation, larger hopes, plans, courage and success. She conquered poverty by conquering fear, learning of, and trusting in herself and daring to say, "I can and I will."

B.F. Austin - How To Make Money – 1918