Pushing to the Front

by Orison Swett Marden

House in which Abraham Lincoln was born

What was there in that rude frontier forest, where this poor boy scarcely ever saw any one who knew anything of books, to rouse his ambition and to stimulate him to self-education? Whence came that yearning to know the history of men and women who had made a nation; to know the history of his country? Whence came that passion to devour the dry statutes of Indiana, as a young girl would devour a love story? Whence came that all-absorbing ambition to be somebody in the world; to serve his country with no selfish ambition? Had his father been rich and well-educated instead of a poor man who could neither read nor write and who was generally of a shiftless and roving disposition, there is no likelihood that Lincoln would ever have become the powerful man he was.

Had he not felt that imperious "must" calling him, the prod of necessity spurring him on, whence would have come the motive which led him to struggle for self-development, self-unfoldment? If he had been born and educated in luxury, his character would probably have been soft and flabby in comparison with what it was.

Where in all the annals of history is there another record of one born of such poor parentage and reared in such a wretched environment, who ever rose to such eminence? Imagine a boy of to-day, so hungry for an education that he would walk nine miles a day to attend a rude frontier school in a log cabin! What would the city boys of to-day, who do not want to walk even a few blocks to school, think of a youth who would do what Lincoln did to overcome his handicap?

CHAPTER V

OPPORTUNITIES WHERE YOU ARE

To each man's life there comes a time supreme;
One day, one night, one morning, or one noon,
One freighted hour, one moment opportune,
One rift through which sublime fulfillments gleam,
One space when fate goes tiding with the stream,
One Once, in balance 'twixt Too Late, Too Soon,
And ready for the passing instant's boon
To tip in favor the uncertain beam.
Ah, happy he who, knowing how to wait,
Knows also how to watch and work and stand
On Life's broad deck alert, and at the prow
To seize the passing moment, big with fate,
From Opportunity's extended hand,
When the great clock of destiny strikes Now!
MARY A. TOWNSEND.

What is opportunity to a man who can't use it? An unfecundated egg, which the waves of time wash away into non-entity.—GEORGE ELIOT.

The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.—DISRAELI.

"There are no longer any good chances for young men," complained a youthful law student to Daniel Webster. "There is always room at the top," replied the great statesman and jurist.

No chance, no opportunities, in a land where thousands of poor boys become rich men, where newsboys go to Congress, and where those born in the lowest stations attain the highest positions? The world is all gates, all opportunities to him who will use them. But, like Bunyan's Pilgrim in the dungeon of Giant Despair's castle, who had the key of deliverance all the time with him but had forgotten it, we fail to rely wholly upon the ability to advance all that is good for us which has been given to the weakest as well as the strongest. We depend too much upon outside assistance.

"We look too high
For things close by."

A Baltimore lady lost a valuable diamond bracelet at a ball, and supposed that it was stolen from the pocket of her cloak. Years afterward she washed the steps of the Peabody Institute, pondering how to get money to buy food. She cut up an old, worn-out, ragged cloak to make a hood, when lo! in the lining of the cloak she discovered the diamond bracelet. During all her poverty she was worth $3500, but did not know it.

Many of us who think we are poor are rich in opportunities, if we could only see them, in possibilities all about us, in faculties worth more than diamond bracelets. In our large Eastern cities it has been found that at least ninety-four out of every hundred found their first fortune at home, or near at hand, and in meeting common every-day wants. It is a sorry day for a young man who can not see any opportunities where he is, but thinks he can do better somewhere else. Some Brazilian shepherds organized a party to go to California to dig gold, and took along a handful of translucent pebbles to play checkers with on the voyage. After arriving in San Francisco, and after they had thrown most of the pebbles away, they discovered that they were diamonds. They hastened back to Brazil, only to find that the mines from which the pebbles had been gathered had been taken up by other prospectors and sold to the government.

The richest gold and silver mine in Nevada was sold by the owner for $42, to get money to pay his passage to other mines, where he thought he could get rich. Professor Agassiz once told the Harvard students of a farmer who owned a farm of hundreds of acres of unprofitable woods and rocks, and concluded to sell out and get into a more profitable business. He decided to go into the coal-oil business; he studied coal measures and coal-oil deposits, and experimented for a long time. He sold his farm for $200, and engaged in his new business two hundred miles away. Only a short time after, the man who bought his farm discovered upon it a great flood of coal-oil, which the farmer had previously ignorantly tried to drain off.

Hundreds of years ago there lived near the shore of the river Indus a Persian by the name of Ali Hafed. He lived in a cottage on the river bank, from which he could get a grand view of the beautiful country stretching away to the sea. He had a wife and children; an extensive farm, fields of grain, gardens of flowers, orchards of fruit, and miles of forest. He had plenty of money and everything that heart could wish. He was contented and happy. One evening a priest of Buddha visited him, and, sitting before the fire, explained to him how the world was made, and how the first beams of sunlight condensed on the earth's surface into diamonds.

The old priest told that a drop of sunlight the size of his thumb was worth more than large mines of copper, silver, or gold; that with one of them he could buy many farms like his; that with a handful he could buy a province, and with a mine of diamonds he could purchase a kingdom. Ali Hafed listened, and was no longer a rich man. He had been touched with discontent, and with that all wealth vanishes. Early the next morning he woke the priest who had been the cause of his unhappiness, and anxiously asked him where he could find a mine of diamonds. "What do you want of diamonds?" asked the astonished priest. "I want to be rich and place my children on thrones." "All you have to do is to go and search until you find them," said the priest. "But where shall I go?" asked the poor farmer. "Go anywhere, north, south, east, or west." "How shall I know when I have found the place?" "When you find a river running over white sands between high mountain ranges, in those white sands you will find diamonds," answered the priest.

The discontented man sold the farm for what he could get, left his family with a neighbor, took the money he had at interest, and went to search for the coveted treasure. Over the mountains of Arabia, through Palestine and Egypt, he wandered for years, but found no diamonds. When his money was all gone and starvation stared him in the face, ashamed of his folly and of his rags, poor Ali Hafed threw himself into the tide and was drowned. The man who bought his farm was a contented man, who made the most of his surroundings, and did not believe in going away from home to hunt for diamonds or success. While his camel was drinking in the garden one day, he noticed a flash of light from the white sands of the brook. He picked up a pebble, and pleased with its brilliant hues took it into the house, put it on the shelf near the fireplace, and forgot all about it.

The old priest of Buddha who had filled Ali Hafed with the fatal discontent called one day upon the new owner of the farm. He had no sooner entered the room than his eye caught that flash of light from the stone. "Here's a diamond! here's a diamond!" he shouted in great excitement. "Has Ali Hafed returned?" "No," said the farmer, "nor is that a diamond. That is but a stone." They went into the garden and stirred up the white sand with their fingers, and behold, other diamonds more beautiful than the first gleamed out of it. So the famous diamond beds of Golconda were discovered. Had Ali Hafed been content to remain at home, and dug in his own garden, instead of going abroad in search for wealth, he would have been one of the richest men in the world, for the entire farm abounded in the richest of gems.

You have your own special place and work. Find it, fill it. Scarcely a boy or girl will read these lines but has much better opportunity to win success than Garfield, Wilson, Franklin, Lincoln, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frances Willard, and thousands of others had. But to succeed you must be prepared to seize and improve the opportunity when it comes. Remember that four things come not back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.

It is one of the paradoxes of civilization that the more opportunities are utilized, the more new ones are thereby created. New openings are as easy to find as ever to those who do their best; although it is not so easy as formerly to obtain great distinction in the old lines, because the standard has advanced so much, and competition has so greatly increased. "The world is no longer clay," said Emerson, "but rather iron in the hands of its workers, and men have got to hammer out a place for themselves by steady and rugged blows."

Thousands of men have made fortunes out of trifles which others pass by. As the bee gets honey from the same flower from which the spider gets poison, so some men will get a fortune out of the commonest and meanest things, as scraps of leather, cotton waste, slag, iron filings, from which others get only poverty and failure. There is scarcely a thing which contributes to the welfare and comfort of humanity, scarcely an article of household furniture, a kitchen utensil, an article of clothing or of food, that is not capable of an improvement in which there may be a fortune.

Opportunities? They are all around us. Forces of nature plead to be used in the service of man, as lightning for ages tried to attract his attention to the great force of electricity, which would do his drudgery and leave him to develop the God-given powers within him. There is power lying latent everywhere waiting for the observant eye to discover it.

First find out what the world needs and then supply the want. An invention to make smoke go the wrong way in a chimney might be a very ingenious thing, but it would be of no use to humanity. The patent office at Washington is full of wonderful devices of ingenious mechanism, but not one in hundreds is of use to the inventor or to the world. And yet how many families have been impoverished, and have struggled for years amid want and woe, while the father has been working on useless inventions. A. T. Stewart, as a boy, lost eighty-seven cents, when his capital was one dollar and a half, in buying buttons and thread which shoppers did not call for. After that he made it a rule never to buy anything which the public did not want, and so prospered.

An observing man, the eyelets of whose shoes pulled out, but who could not afford to get another pair, said to himself, "I will make a metallic lacing hook, which can be riveted into the leather." He was then so poor that he had to borrow a sickle to cut grass in front of his hired tenement. He became a very rich man.

An observing barber in Newark, N. J., thought he could make an improvement on shears for cutting hair, invented clippers, and became rich. A Maine man was called in from the hayfield to wash clothes for his invalid wife. He had never realized what it was to wash before. Finding the method slow and laborious, he invented the washing machine, and made a fortune. A man who was suffering terribly with toothache felt sure there must be some way of filling teeth which would prevent their aching and he invented the method of gold filling for teeth.

The great things of the world have not been done by men of large means. Ericsson began the construction of the screw propellers in a bathroom. The cotton-gin was first manufactured in a log cabin. John Harrison, the great inventor of the marine chronometer, began his career in the loft of an old barn. Parts of the first steamboat ever run in America were set up in the vestry of a church in Philadelphia by Fitch. McCormick began to make his famous reaper in a grist-mill. The first model dry-dock was made in an attic. Clark, the founder of Clark University of Worcester, Mass., began his great fortune by making toy wagons in a horse shed. Farquhar made umbrellas in his sitting-room, with his daughter's help, until he sold enough to hire a loft. Edison began his experiments in a baggage car on the Grand Trunk Railroad when a newsboy.

Michael Angelo found a piece of discarded Carrara marble among waste rubbish beside a street in Florence, which some unskilful workman had cut, hacked, spoiled, and thrown away. No doubt many artists had noticed the fine quality of the marble, and regretted that it should have been spoiled. But Michael Angelo still saw an angel in the ruin, and with his chisel and mallet he called out from it one of the finest pieces of statuary in Italy, the young David.

Patrick Henry was called a lazy boy, a good-for-nothing farmer, and he failed as a merchant. He was always dreaming of some far-off greatness, and never thought he could be a hero among the corn and tobacco and saddlebags of Virginia. He studied law for six weeks; when he put out his shingle. People thought he would fail, but in his first case he showed that he had a wonderful power of oratory. It then first dawned upon him that he could be a hero in Virginia. From the time the Stamp Act was passed and Henry was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses, and he had introduced his famous resolution against the unjust taxation of the American colonies, he rose steadily until he became one of the brilliant orators of America. In one of his first speeches upon this resolution he uttered these words, which were prophetic of his power and courage: "Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third—may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it."

The great natural philosopher, Faraday, who was the son of a blacksmith, wrote, when a young man, to Humphry Davy, asking for employment at the Royal Institution. Davy consulted a friend on the matter. "Here is a letter from a young man named Faraday; he has been attending my lectures, and wants me to give him employment at the Royal Institution—what can I do?" "Do? put him to washing bottles; if he is good for anything he will do it directly; if he refuses he is good for nothing." But the boy who could experiment in the attic of an apothecary shop with an old pan and glass vials during every moment he could snatch from his work saw an opportunity in washing bottles, which led to a professorship at the Royal Academy at Woolwich. Tyndall said of this boy with no chance, "He is the greatest experimental philosopher the world has ever seen." He became the wonder of his age in science.

There is a legend of an artist who long sought for a piece of sandalwood, out of which to carve a Madonna. He was about to give up in despair, leaving the vision of his life unrealized, when in a dream he was bidden to carve his Madonna from a block of oak wood which was destined for the fire. He obeyed, and produced a masterpiece from a log of common firewood. Many of us lose great opportunities in life by waiting to find sandalwood for our carvings, when they really lie hidden in the common logs that we burn. One man goes through life without seeing chances for doing anything great, while another close beside him snatches from the same circumstances and privileges opportunities for achieving grand results.

Opportunities? They are everywhere. "America is another name for opportunities. Our whole history appears like a last effort of divine Providence in behalf of the human race." Never before were there such grand openings, such chances, such opportunities. Especially is this true for girls and young women. A new era is dawning for them. Hundreds of occupations and professions, which were closed to them only a few years ago, are now inviting them to enter.

We can not all of us perhaps make great discoveries like Newton, Faraday, Edison, and Thompson, or paint immortal pictures like an Angelo or a Raphael. But we can all of us make our lives sublime, by seizing common occasions and making them great. What chance had the young girl, Grace Darling, to distinguish herself, living on those barren lighthouse rocks alone with her aged parents? But while her brothers and sisters, who moved to the cities to win wealth and fame, are not known to the world, she became more famous than a princess. This poor girl did not need to go to London to see the nobility; they came to the lighthouse to see her. Right at home she had won fame which the regal heirs might envy, and a name which will never perish from the earth. She did not wander away into dreamy distance for fame and fortune, but did her best where duty had placed her.

If you want to get rich, study yourself and your own wants. You will find that millions have the same wants. The safest business is always connected with man's prime necessities. He must have clothing and dwelling; he must eat. He wants comforts, facilities of all kinds for pleasure, education, and culture. Any man who can supply a great want of humanity, improve any methods which men use, supply any demand of comfort, or contribute in any way to their well-being, can make a fortune.

"The golden opportunity
Is never offered twice; seize then the hour
When Fortune smiles and Duty points the way."

Why thus longing, thus forever sighing,
For the far-off, unattained and dim,
While the beautiful, all around thee lying
Offers up its low, perpetual hymn?
HARRIET WINSLOW.

CHAPTER VI

POSSIBILITIES IN SPARE MOMENTS

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.—FRANKLIN.

Eternity itself cannot restore the loss struck from the minute.—ANCIENT POET.

Periunt et imputantur,—the hours perish and are laid to our charge.—INSCRIPTION ON A DIAL AT OXFORD.

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.—SHAKESPEARE.

Believe me when I tell you that thrift of time will repay you in after life with a usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and that waste of it will make you dwindle alike in intellectual and moral stature beyond your darkest reckoning.—GLADSTONE.

Lost! Somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.—HORACE MANN.

"What is the price of that book?" at length asked a man who had been dawdling for an hour in the front store of Benjamin Franklin's newspaper establishment. "One dollar," replied the clerk. "One dollar," echoed the lounger; "can't you take less than that?" "One dollar is the price," was the answer.

The would-be purchaser looked over the books on sale a while longer, and then inquired: "Is Mr. Franklin in?" "Yes," said the clerk, "he is very busy in the press-room." "Well, I want to see him," persisted the man. The proprietor was called, and the stranger asked: "What is the lowest, Mr. Franklin, that you can take for that book?" "One dollar and a quarter," was the prompt rejoinder. "One dollar and a quarter! Why, your clerk asked me only a dollar just now." "True," said Franklin, "and I could have better afforded to take a dollar than to leave my work."

The man seemed surprised; but, wishing to end a parley of his own seeking, he demanded: "Well, come now, tell me your lowest price for this book." "One dollar and a half," replied Franklin. "A dollar and a half! Why, you offered it yourself for a dollar and a quarter." "Yes," said Franklin coolly, "and I could better have taken that price then than a dollar and a half now."

The man silently laid the money on the counter, took his book, and left the store, having received a salutary lesson from a master in the art of transmuting time, at will, into either wealth or wisdom.

Time-wasters are everywhere.

On the floor of the gold-working room, in the United States Mint at Philadelphia, there is a wooden lattice-work which is taken up when the floor is swept, and the fine particles of gold-dust, thousands of dollars' yearly, are thus saved. So every successful man has a kind of network to catch "the raspings and parings of existence, those leavings of days and wee bits of hours" which most people sweep into the waste of life. He who hoards and turns to account all odd minutes, half hours, unexpected holidays, gaps "between times," and chasms of waiting for unpunctual persons, achieves results which astonish those who have not mastered this most valuable secret.

"All that I have accomplished, expect to, or hope to accomplish," said Elihu Burritt, "has been and will be by that plodding, patient, persevering process of accretion which builds the ant-heap—particle by particle, thought by thought, fact by fact. And if ever I was actuated by ambition, its highest and warmest aspiration reached no further than the hope to set before the young men of my country an example in employing those invaluable fragments of time called moments."

"I have been wondering how Ned contrived to monopolize all the talents of the family," said a brother, found in a brown study after listening to one of Burke's speeches in Parliament; "but then I remember; when we were at play, he was always at work."

The days come to us like friends in disguise, bringing priceless gifts from an unseen hand; but, if we do not use them, they are borne silently away, never to return. Each successive morning new gifts are brought, but if we failed to accept those that were brought yesterday and the day before, we become less and less able to turn them to account, until the ability to appreciate and utilize them is exhausted. Wisely was it said that lost wealth may be regained by industry and economy, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance and medicine, but lost time is gone forever.

"Oh, it's only five minutes or ten minutes till mealtime; there's no time to do anything now," is one of the commonest expressions heard in the family. But what monuments have been built up by poor boys with no chance, out of broken fragments of time which many of us throw away! The very hours you have wasted, if improved, might have insured your success.

Marion Harland has accomplished wonders, and she has been able to do this by economizing the minutes to shape her novels and newspaper articles, when her children were in bed and whenever she could get a spare minute. Though she has done so much, yet all her life has been subject to interruptions which would have discouraged most women from attempting anything outside their regular family duties. She has glorified the commonplace as few other women have done. Harriet Beecher Stowe, too, wrote her great masterpiece, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," in the midst of pressing household cares. Beecher read Froude's "England" a little each day while he had to wait for dinner. Longfellow translated the "Inferno" by snatches of ten minutes a day, while waiting for his coffee to boil, persisting for years until the work was done.

Hugh Miller, while working hard as a stone-mason, found time to read scientific books, and write the lessons learned from the blocks of stone he handled.

Madame de Genlis, when companion of the future Queen of France, composed several of her charming volumes while waiting for the princess to whom she gave her daily lessons. Burns wrote many of his most beautiful poems while working on a farm. The author of "Paradise Lost" was a teacher, Secretary of the Commonwealth, Secretary of the Lord Protector, and had to write his sublime poetry whenever he could snatch a few minutes from a busy life. John Stuart Mill did much of his best work as a writer while a clerk in the East India House. Galileo was a surgeon, yet to the improvement of his spare moments the world owes some of its greatest discoveries.

If a genius like Gladstone carried through life a little book in his pocket lest an unexpected spare moment slip from his grasp, what should we of common abilities not resort to, to save the precious moments from oblivion? What a rebuke is such a life to the thousands of young men and women who throw away whole months and even years of that which the "Grand Old Man" hoarded up even to the smallest fragments! Many a great man has snatched his reputation from odd bits of time which others, who wonder at their failure to get on, throw away. In Dante's time nearly every literary man in Italy was a hard-working merchant, physician, statesman, judge, or soldier.

While Michael Faraday was employed binding books, he devoted all his leisure to experiments. At one time he wrote to a friend, "Time is all I require. Oh, that I could purchase at a cheap rate some of our modern gentlemen's spare hours—nay, days."

Oh, the power of ceaseless industry to perform miracles!

Alexander von Humboldt's days were so occupied with his business that he had to pursue his scientific labors in the night or early morning, while others were asleep.

One hour a day withdrawn from frivolous pursuits and profitably employed would enable any man of ordinary capacity to master a complete science. One hour a day would in ten years make an ignorant man a well-informed man. It would earn enough to pay for two daily and two weekly papers, two leading magazines, and at least a dozen good books. In an hour a day a boy or girl could read twenty pages thoughtfully—over seven thousand pages, or eighteen large volumes in a year. An hour a day might make all the difference between bare existence and useful, happy living. An hour a day might make—nay, has made—an unknown man a famous one, a useless man a benefactor to his race. Consider, then, the mighty possibilities of two—four—yes, six hours a day that are, on the average, thrown away by young men and women in the restless desire for fun and diversion!

Every young man should have a hobby to occupy his leisure hours, something useful to which he can turn with delight. It might be in line with his work or otherwise, only his heart must be in it.

If one chooses wisely, the study, research, and occupation that a hobby confers will broaden character and transform the home.

"He has nothing to prevent him but too much idleness, which, I have observed," says Burke, "fills up a man's time much more completely and leaves him less his own master, than any sort of employment whatsoever."

Some boys will pick up a good education in the odds and ends of time which others carelessly throw away, as one man saves a fortune by small economies which others disdain to practise. What young man is too busy to get an hour a day for self-improvement? Charles C. Frost, the celebrated shoemaker of Vermont, resolved to devote one hour a day to study. He became one of the most noted mathematicians in the United States, and also gained an enviable reputation in other departments of knowledge. John Hunter, like Napoleon, allowed himself but four hours of sleep. It took Professor Owen ten years to arrange and classify the specimens in Comparative Anatomy, over twenty-four thousand in number, which Hunter's industry had collected. What a record for a boy who began his studies while working as a carpenter!

John Q. Adams complained bitterly when robbed of his time by those who had no right to it. An Italian scholar put over his door the inscription: "Whoever tarries here must join in my labors." Carlyle, Tennyson, Browning, and Dickens signed a remonstrance against organ-grinders who disturbed their work.

Many of the greatest men of history earned their fame outside of their regular occupations in odd bits of time which most people squander. Spenser made his reputation in his spare time while Secretary to the Lord Deputy of Ireland. Sir John Lubbock's fame rests on his prehistoric studies, prosecuted outside of his busy banking-hours. Southey, seldom idle for a minute, wrote a hundred volumes. Hawthorne's notebook shows that he never let a chance thought or circumstance escape him. Franklin was a tireless worker. He crowded his meals and sleep into as small compass as possible so that he might gain time for study. When a child, he became impatient of his father's long grace at table, and asked him if he could not say grace over a whole cask once for all, and save time. He wrote some of his best productions on shipboard, such as his "Improvement of Navigation" and "Smoky Chimneys."

What a lesson there is in Raphael's brief thirty-seven years to those who plead "no time" as an excuse for wasted lives!

Great men have ever been misers of moments. Cicero said: "What others give to public shows and entertainments, nay, even to mental and bodily rest, I give to the study of philosophy." Lord Bacon's fame springs from the work of his leisure hours while Chancellor of England. During an interview with a great monarch, Goethe suddenly excused himself, went into an adjoining room and wrote down a thought for his "Faust," lest it should be forgotten. Sir Humphry Davy achieved eminence in spare moments in an attic of an apothecary's shop. Pope would often rise in the night to write out thoughts that would not come during the busy day. Grote wrote his matchless "History of Greece" during the hours of leisure snatched from his duties as a banker.

George Stephenson seized the moments as though they were gold. He educated himself and did much of his best work during his spare moments. He learned arithmetic during the night shifts when he was an engineer. Mozart would not allow a moment to slip by unimproved. He would not stop his work long enough to sleep, and would sometimes write two whole nights and a day without intermission. He wrote his famous "Requiem" on his death-bed.

Caesar said: "Under my tent in the fiercest struggle of war I have always found time to think of many other things." He was once shipwrecked, and had to swim ashore; but he carried with him the manuscript of his "Commentaries," upon which he was at work when the ship went down.

Dr. Mason Good translated "Lucretius" while riding to visit his patients in London. Dr. Darwin composed most of his works by writing his thoughts on scraps of paper wherever he happened to be. Watt learned chemistry and mathematics while working at his trade of a mathematical instrument-maker. Henry Kirke White learned Greek while walking to and from the lawyer's office where he was studying. Dr. Burney learned Italian and French on horseback. Matthew Hale wrote his "Contemplations" while traveling on his circuit as judge.

The present time is the raw material out of which we make whatever we will. Do not brood over the past, or dream of the future, but seize the instant and get your lesson from the hour. The man is yet unborn who rightly measures and fully realizes the value of an hour. As Fenelon says, God never gives but one moment at a time, and does not give a second until he withdraws the first.

Lord Brougham could not bear to lose a moment, yet he was so systematic that he always seemed to have more leisure than many who did not accomplish a tithe of what he did. He achieved distinction in politics, law, science, and literature.

Dr. Johnson wrote "Rasselas" in the evenings of a single week, in order to meet the expenses of his mother's funeral.

Lincoln studied law during his spare hours while surveying, and learned the common branches unaided while tending store. Mrs. Somerville learned botany and astronomy and wrote books while her neighbors were gossiping and idling. At eighty she published "Molecular and Microscopical Science."

The worst of a lost hour is not so much in the wasted time as in the wasted power. Idleness rusts the nerves and makes the muscles creak. Work has system, laziness has none.

President Quincy never went to bed until he had laid his plans for the next day.

Dalton's industry was the passion of his life. He made and recorded over two hundred thousand meteorological observations.

In factories for making cloth a single broken thread ruins a whole web; it is traced back to the girl who made the blunder and the loss is deducted from her wages. But who shall pay for the broken threads in life's great web? We cannot throw back and forth an empty shuttle; threads of some kind follow every movement as we weave the web of our fate. It may be a shoddy thread of wasted hours or lost opportunities that will mar the fabric and mortify the workman forever; or it may be a golden thread which will add to its beauty and luster. We cannot stop the shuttle or pull out the unfortunate thread which stretches across the fabric, a perpetual witness of our folly.

No one is anxious about a young man while he is busy in useful work. But where does he eat his lunch at noon? Where does he go when he leaves his boarding-house at night? What does he do after supper? Where does he spend his Sundays and holidays? The way he uses his spare moments reveals his character. The great majority of youths who go to the bad are ruined after supper. Most of those who climb upward to honor and fame devote their evenings to study or work or the society of those who can help and improve them. Each evening is a crisis in the career of a young man. There is a deep significance in the lines of Whittier:—

This day we fashion Destiny, our web of Fate we spin;
This day for all hereafter choose we holiness or sin.

Time is money. We should not be stingy or mean with it, but we should not throw away an hour any more than we would throw away a dollar-bill. Waste of time means waste of energy, waste of vitality, waste of character in dissipation. It means the waste of opportunities which will never come back. Beware how you kill time, for all your future lives in it.

"And it is left for each," says Edward Everett, "by the cultivation of every talent, by watching with an eagle's eye for every chance of improvement, by redeeming time, defying temptation, and scorning sensual pleasure, to make himself useful, honored, and happy."

CHAPTER VII

HOW POOR BOYS AND GIRLS GO TO COLLEGE

"Can I afford to go to college?" asks many an American youth who has hardly a dollar to his name and who knows that a college course means years of sacrifice and struggle.

It seems a great hardship, indeed, for a young man with an ambition to do something in the world to be compelled to pay his own way through school and college by hard work. But history shows us that the men who have led in the van of human progress have been, as a rule, self-educated, self-made.

The average boy of to-day who wishes to obtain a liberal education has a better chance by a hundredfold than had Daniel Webster or James A. Garfield. There is scarcely one in good health who reads these lines but can be assured that if he will he may. Here, as elsewhere, the will can usually make the way, and never before was there so many avenues of resource open to the strong will, the inflexible purpose, as there are to-day—at this hour and this moment.

"Of the five thousand persons—students,—directly connected with Harvard University," writes a graduate, "five hundred are students entirely or almost entirely dependent upon their own resources. They are not a poverty-stricken lot, however, for half of them make an income above the average allowance of boys in smaller colleges. From $700 to $1,000 are by no means exceptional yearly earnings of a student who is capable of doing newspaper work or tutoring,—branches of employment that pay well at Harvard.

"There are some men that make much more. A classmate of the writer entered college with about twenty-five dollars. As a freshman he had a hard struggle. In his junior year, however, he prospered and in his last ten months of undergraduate work he cleared above his college expenses, which were none too low, upward of $3,000.

"He made his money by advertising schemes and other publishing ventures. A few months after graduation he married. He is now living comfortably in Cambridge."

A son of poor parents, living in Springfield, New York, worked his way through an academy. This only whetted his appetite for knowledge, and he determined to advance, relying wholly on himself for success. Accordingly, he proceeded to Schenectady, and arranged with a professor of Union College to pay for his tuition by working. He rented a small room, which served for study and home, the expense of his bread-and-milk diet never exceeding fifty cents a week. After graduation, he turned his attention to civil engineering, and, later, to the construction of iron bridges of his own design. He procured many valuable patents, and amassed a fortune. His life was a success, the foundation being self-reliance and integrity.

Albert J. Beveridge, the junior United States Senator from Indiana, entered college with no other capital than fifty dollars loaned to him by a friend. He served as steward of a college club, and added to his original fund of fifty dollars by taking the freshman essay prize of twenty-five dollars. When summer came, he returned to work in the harvest fields and broke the wheat-cutting records of the county. He carried his books with him morning, noon and night, and studied persistently. When he returned to college he began to be recognized as an exceptional man. He had shaped his course and worked to it.

The president of his class at Columbia University recently earned the money to pay for his course by selling agricultural implements. One of his classmates, by the savings of two years' work as a farm laborer, and money earned by tutoring, writing, and copying done after study hours, not only paid his way through college, but helped to support his aged parents. He believed that he could afford a college training and he got it.

At Chicago University many hundreds of plucky young men are working their way. The ways of earning money are various, depending upon the opportunities for work, and the student's ability and adaptability. To be a correspondent of city daily papers is the most coveted occupation, but only a few can obtain such positions. Some dozen or more teach night school. Several teach in the public schools in the daytime, and do their university work in the afternoons and evenings, so as to take their degrees. Scores carry daily papers, by which they earn two and one-half to three and one-half dollars a week; but, as this does not pay expenses, they add other employments. A few find evening work in the city library. Some attend to lawns in summer and furnaces in winter; by having several of each to care for, they earn from five to ten dollars a week. Many are waiters at clubs and restaurants. Some solicit advertisements. The divinity students, after the first year, preach in small towns. Several are tutors. Two young men made twelve hundred dollars apiece, in this way, in one year. One student is a member of a city orchestra, earning twelve dollars a week. A few serve in the university postoffice, and receive twenty cents an hour.

A representative American college president recently said: "I regard it as, on the whole, a distinct advantage that a student should have to pay his own way in part as a condition of obtaining a college education. It gives a reality and vigor to one's work which is less likely to be obtained by those who are carried through college. I do not regard it, however, as desirable that one should have to work his own way entirely, as the tax upon strength and time is likely to be such as to interfere with scholarship and to undermine health."

Circumstances have rarely favored great men. A lowly beginning is no bar to a great career. The boy who works his way through college may have a hard time of it, but he will learn how to work his way in life, and will often take higher rank in school, and in after life, than his classmate who is the son of a millionaire. It is the son and daughter of the farmer, the mechanic and the operative, the great average class of our country, whose funds are small and opportunities few, that the republic will depend on most for good citizenship and brains in the future. The problem of securing a good education, where means are limited and time short, is of great importance both to the individual and the nation. Encouragement and useful hints are offered by the experience of many bright young people who have worked their way to diplomas worthily bestowed.

Gaius B. Frost was graduated at the Brattleboro, Vt., High School, taught district schools six terms, and entered Dartmouth College with just money enough to pay the first necessary expenses. He worked in gardens and as a janitor for some time. During his course he taught six terms as principal of a high school, and one year as assistant superintendent in the Essex County Truant School, at Lawrence, Mass., pushed a rolling chair at the Columbian Exposition, Chicago, was porter one season at Oak Hill House, Littleton, N. H., and canvassed for a publishing house one summer in Maine. None of his fellow-students did more to secure an education.

Isaac J. Cox of Philadelphia worked his way through Kimball Academy, Meriden, N. H., and through Dartmouth College, doing many kinds of work. There was no honest work within the limits of his ability that he would not undertake to pay his way. He served summers as waiter in a White Mountain hotel, finally becoming head-waiter. Like Mr. Frost, he ranked well in his classes, and is a young man of solid character and distinguished attainments.

For four years Richard Weil was noted as the great prize winner of Columbia College, and for "turning his time, attention and energy to any work that would bring remuneration." He would do any honest work that would bring cash,—and every cent of this money as well as every hour not spent in sleep throughout the four years of his college course was devoted to getting his education.

All these and many more from the ranks of the bright and well-trained young men who have been graduated from the colleges and universities of the country in recent years believed—sincerely, doggedly believed—that a college training was something that they must have. The question of whether or not they could afford it does not appear to have occasioned much hesitancy on their part. It is evident that they did not for one instant think that they could not afford to go to college.

In an investigation conducted to ascertain exact figures and facts which a poor boy must meet in working his way through college, it was found that, in a list of forty-five representative colleges and universities, having a student population of somewhat over forty thousand, the average expense per year is three hundred and four dollars; the average maximum expense, five hundred and twenty-nine dollars. In some of the smaller colleges the minimum expense per year is from seventy-five dollars to one hundred and ten dollars. There are many who get along on an expenditure of from one hundred and fifty dollars to two hundred dollars per year, while the maximum expense rises in but few instances above one thousand dollars.

In Western and Southern colleges the averages are lower. For example, eighteen well-known Western colleges and universities have a general average expense of two hundred and forty-two dollars per year, while fourteen as well-known Eastern institutions give an average expense of four hundred and forty-four dollars.

Statistics of expense, and the opportunities for self-help, at some of the best known Eastern institutions are full of interest:

Amherst makes a free gift of the tuition to prospective ministers; has one hundred tuition scholarships for other students of good character, habits, and standing; has some free rooms; makes loans at low rates; students have chances to earn money at tutoring, table-waiting, shorthand, care of buildings, newspaper correspondence, agencies for laundries, sale of books, etc. Five hundred dollars a year will defray all necessary expenses.

Bowdoin has nearly a hundred scholarships, fifty dollars to seventy-five dollars a year: "no limits placed on habits or social privileges of recipients;" students getting employment in the library or laboratories can earn about one-fourth of their expenses; these will be, for the college year, three hundred dollars to four hundred dollars.

Brown University has over a hundred tuition scholarships and a loan fund; often remits room rent in return for services about the college buildings; requires studiousness and economy in the case of assisted students. Many students earn money in various ways. The average yearly expenditure is five hundred dollars.

The cost at Columbia University averages five hundred and forty-seven dollars, the lowest being three hundred and eighty-seven dollars. A great many students who know how to get on in a great city work their way through Columbia.

Cornell University gives free tuition and free rooms to seniors and juniors of good standing in their studies and of good habits. It has thirty-six two-year scholarships (two hundred dollars), for freshmen, won by success in competitive examination. It has also five hundred and twelve state tuition scholarships. Many students support themselves in part by waiting on table, by shorthand, newspaper work, etc. The average yearly expenditure per student is five hundred dollars.

Dartmouth has some three hundred scholarships; those above fifty dollars conditioned on class rank; some rooms at nominal rent; requirements, economy and total abstinence; work of one sort or another to be had by needy students; a few get through on less than two hundred and fifty dollars a year; the average expenditure is about four hundred dollars.

Harvard has about two hundred and seventy-five scholarships, sixty dollars to four hundred dollars apiece, large beneficiary and loan funds, distributed or loaned in sums of forty dollars to two hundred and fifty dollars to needy and promising under-graduates; freshmen (usually) barred; a faculty employment committee; some students earning money as stenographers, typewriters, reporters, private tutors, clerks, canvassers, and singers; yearly expenditure (exclusive of clothes, washing, books, and stationery, laboratory charges, membership in societies, subscriptions and service), three hundred and fifty-eight dollars to one thousand and thirty-five dollars.

The University of Pennsylvania in a recent year gave three hundred and fifteen students forty-three thousand, two hundred and forty-two dollars in free scholarships and fellowships; no requirements except good standing. No money loaned, no free rooms. Many students support themselves in part, and a few wholly. The average expenditure per year, exclusive of clothes, railway fares, etc., is four hundred and fifty dollars.

Wesleyan University remits tuition wholly or in part to two-thirds of its under-graduates. Loan funds are available. "Beneficiaries must be frugal in habits, total abstainers, and maintain good standing and conduct." Many students are self-supporting, thirty-five per cent of the whole undergraduate body earning money. The yearly expenditure is three hundred and twenty-five dollars.

Yale is pretty well off now for fellowships and prizes; remits all but forty dollars of term bills, in case of worthy students, regular in attendance and studious; many such students earning money for themselves; average yearly expenditure, about six hundred dollars.

There is a splendid chance for girls at some of the soundest and best known girls' colleges in the United States.

The number of girls in the University of Michigan who are paying their own way is large. "Most of them," says Dr. Eliza M. Mosher, woman's dean of the college, "have earned the money by teaching. It is not unusual for students to come here for two years and go away for a time, in order to earn money to complete the course. Some of our most worthy graduates have done this. Some lighten their expenses by waiting on tables in boarding-houses, thus paying for their board. Others get room and board in the homes of professors by giving, daily, three hours of service about the house. A few take care of children, two or three hours a day, in the families of the faculty. One young woman, who is especially brave and in good earnest, worked as a chambermaid on a lake steamer last year and hurried away this year to do the same. It is her aim to earn one hundred dollars. With this sum, and a chance to pay for room and board by giving service, she will pay the coming year's expenses. Because it is especially difficult to obtain good servants in this inland town, there are a few people who are glad to give the college girls such employment."

"It is my opinion," said Miss Mary E. Woolley, president of Mount Holyoke College, "that, if a girl with average intelligence and energy wishes a college education, she can obtain it. As far as I know, the girls who have earned money to pay their way through college, at least in part, have accomplished it by tutoring, typewriting or stenography. Some of them earn pin-money while in college by tutoring, typewriting, sewing, summer work in libraries and offices, and in various little ways such as putting up lunches, taking care of rooms, executing commissions, and newspaper work. There are not many opportunities at Mount Holyoke to earn large amounts of money, but pin-money may be acquired in many little ways by a girl of ingenuity."

The system of compulsory domestic service obtaining now at Mount Holyoke—whereby, in return for thirty, or at the most, fifty minutes a day of light household labor, every student reduces her college expenses by a hundred dollars or a hundred and fifty,—was formerly in use at Wellesley; now, however, it is confined there to a few cottages. It has no foothold at Bryn Mawr, Smith and Vassar, or at the affiliated colleges, Barnard and Radcliffe.

At city colleges, like the last two mentioned, board and lodging cost more than in the country; and in general it is more difficult for a girl to pay any large part of her expenses through her own efforts and carry on her college work at the same time.

A number of girls in Barnard are, however, paying for their clothes, books, car fares, etc., by doing what work they can find. Tutoring in Barnard is seldom available for the undergraduates, because the lists are always full of experienced teachers, who can be engaged by the hour. Typewriting is one of the favorite resources. One student has done particularly well as agent for a firm that makes college caps and gowns. Another girl, a Russian Jewess, from the lower East Side, New York, runs a little "sweat shop," where she keeps a number of women busy making women's wrappers and children's dresses. She has paid all the expenses of her education in this way.

"Do any of your students work their way through?" was asked of a Bryn Mawr authority.

"Some,—to a certain extent," was the reply; "but not many. The lowest entire expenses of a year, are between four hundred and five hundred and fifty dollars. This amount includes positively everything. Two girls may pay part of their expenses by taking charge of the library, and by selling stationery; another, by distributing the mail, and others by 'tutoring'. Those who 'tutor' receive a dollar, a dollar and a half, and sometimes a very good one receives two dollars and a half, a lesson. But to earn all of one's way in a college year, and at the same time to keep up in all the studies, is almost impossible, and is not often done. Yet several are able to pay half their way."

A similar question put to a Vassar student brought the following response:

"Why, yes, I know a girl who has a sign on the door of her room,—'Dresses pressed,'—and she earns a good deal of money, too. Of course, there are many wealthy girls here who are always having something like that done, and who are willing to pay well for it. And so this girl makes a large sum of money, evenings and Saturdays.

"There are other girls who are agents for two of the great manufacturers of chocolate creams.

"The girl that plays the piano for the exercises in the gymnasium is paid for that, and some of the girls paint and make fancy articles, which they sell here, or send to the stores in New York, to be sold. Some of them write for the newspapers and magazines, too, and still others have pupils in music, etc., in Poughkeepsie. Yes, there are a great many girls who manage to pay most of their expenses."

Typewriting, tutoring, assistance rendered in library or laboratory or office, furnish help to many a girl who wishes to help herself, in nearly every college. Beside these standard employments, teaching in evening schools occasionally offers a good opportunity for steady eking out of means.

In many colleges there is opportunity for a girl with taste and cunning fingers to act as a dressmaker, repairer, and general refurnisher to students with generous allowances. Orders for gymnasium suits and swimming suits mean good profits. The reign of the shirt-waist has been a boon to many, for the well-dressed girl was never known to have enough pretty ones, and by a judicious display of attractive samples she is easily tempted to enlarge her supply. Then, too, any girl who is at all deft in the art of sewing can make a shirt-waist without a professional knowledge of cutting and fitting.

No boy or girl in America to-day who has good health, good morals and good grit need despair of getting a college education unless there are extremely unusual reasons against the undertaking.

West of the Alleghanies a college education is accessible to all classes. In most of the state universities tuition is free. In Kansas, for example, board and a room can be had for twelve dollars a month; the college fees are five dollars a year, while the average expenditure of the students does not exceed two hundred dollars per annum. In Ohio, the state university has abolished all tuition fees; and most of the denominational colleges demand fees even lower than were customary in New England half a century ago. Partly by reason of the cheapness of a college education in Ohio, that state now sends more students to college than all of New England. Yet if the total cost is less in the West, on the other hand, the opportunities for self-help are correspondingly more in the East. Every young man or woman should weigh the matter well before concluding that a college education is out of the question.

Former President Tucker of Dartmouth says: "The student who works his way may do it with ease and profit; or he may be seriously handicapped both by his necessities and the time he is obliged to bestow on outside matters. I have seen the sons of rich men lead in scholarship, and the sons of poor men. Poverty under most of the conditions in which we find it in colleges is a spur. Dartmouth College, I think, furnishes a good example. The greater part of its patronage is from poor men. Without examining the statistics, I should say, from facts that have fallen under my observation, that a larger percentage of Dartmouth men have risen to distinction than those of almost any other American college."

The opportunities of to-day are tenfold what they were half a century ago. Former President Schurman of Cornell says of his early life: "At the age of thirteen I left home. I hadn't definite plans as to my future. I merely wanted to get into a village, and to earn some money.

"My father got me a place in the nearest town,—Summerside,—a village of about one thousand inhabitants. For my first year's work I was to receive thirty dollars and my board. Think of that, young men of to-day! Thirty dollars a year for working from seven in the morning until ten at night! But I was glad to get the place. It was a start in the world, and the little village was like a city to my country eyes.

"From the time I began working in the store until to-day, I have always supported myself, and during all the years of my boyhood I never received a penny that I did not earn myself. At the end of my first year, I went to a larger store in the same town, where I was to receive sixty dollars a year and my board. My salary was doubled; I was getting on swimmingly.

"I kept this place for two years, and then I gave it up, against the wishes of my employer, because I had made up my mind that I wanted to get a better education. I determined to go to college.

"I did not know how I was going to do this, except that it must be by my own efforts. I had saved about eighty dollars from my store-keeping, and that was all the money I had in the world.

"When I told my employer of my plan, he tried to dissuade me from it. He pointed out the difficulties in the way of my going to college, and offered to double my pay if I would stay in the store.

"That was the turning-point in my life. In one side was the certainty of one hundred and twenty dollars a year, and the prospect of promotion as fast as I deserved it. Remember what one hundred and twenty dollars meant on Prince Edward Island, and to me, a poor boy who had never possessed such a sum in his life. On the other side was my hope of obtaining an education. I knew that it involved hard work and self-denial, and there was the possibility of failure in the end. But my mind was made up. I would not turn back. I need not say that I do not regret that early decision, although I think that I should have made a successful storekeeper.

"With my capital of eighty dollars, I began to attend the village high school, to get my preparation for college. I had only one year to do it in. My money would not last longer than that. I recited in Latin, Greek, and algebra, all on the same day, and for the next forty weeks I studied harder than I ever had before or have since. At the end of the year I entered the competitive examination for a scholarship in Prince of Wales College, at Charlottetown, on the Island. I had small hope of winning it, my preparation had been so hasty and incomplete. But when the result was announced, I found that I had not only won the scholarship from my county, but stood first of all the competitors on the Island.

"The scholarship I had won amounted to only sixty dollars a year. It seems little enough, but I can say now, after nearly thirty years, that the winning of it was the greatest success I ever have had. I have had other rewards, which, to most persons, would seem immeasurably greater, but with this difference: that first success was essential; without it I could not have gone on. The others I could have done without, if it had been necessary."

For two years young Schurman attended Prince of Wales College. He lived on his scholarship and what he could earn by keeping books for one of the town storekeepers, spending less than one hundred dollars during the entire college year. Afterward, he taught a country school for a year, and then went to Acadia College in Nova Scotia to complete his course.

One of Mr. Schurman's fellow-students in Acadia says that he was remarkable chiefly for taking every prize to which he was eligible. In his senior year, he learned of a scholarship in the University of London offered for competition by the students of Canadian colleges. The scholarship paid five hundred dollars a year for three years. The young student in Acadia was ambitious to continue his studies in England, and saw in this offer his opportunity. He tried the examination and won the prize, in competition with the brightest students in the larger Canadian colleges.

During the three years in the University of London, Mr. Schurman became deeply interested in the study of philosophy, and decided that he had found in it his life-work. He was eager to go to Germany to study under the great leaders of philosophic thought. A way was opened for him, through the offer of the Hibbard Society, in London, of a traveling fellowship with two thousand dollars a year. The honor men of the great English Universities like Oxford and Cambridge were among the competitors, but the poor country boy from Prince Edward Island was again successful, greatly to the surprise of the others.

At the end of his course in Germany, Mr. Schurman, then a Doctor of Philosophy, returned to Acadia College to become a teacher there. Soon afterward, he was called to Dalhousie University, at Halifax, Nova Scotia. In 1886, when a chair of philosophy was established at Cornell, President White, who had once met the brilliant young Canadian, called him to that position. Two years later, Dr. Schurman became dean of the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell; and, in 1892, when the president's chair became vacant, he was placed at the head of the great university. At that time he was only thirty-eight years of age.

A well-known graduate of Amherst college gives the following figures, which to the boy who earnestly wants to go to college are of the most pertinent interest:

"I entered college with $8.42 in my pocket. During the year I earned $60; received from the college a scholarship of $60, and an additional gift of $20; borrowed $190. My current expenses during my freshman year were $4.50 per week. Besides this I spent $10.55 for books; $23.45 for clothing; $10.57 for voluntary subscriptions; $15 for railroad fares; $8.24 for sundries.

"During the next summer I earned $100. I waited on table at a $4 boarding-house all of my sophomore year, and earned half board, retaining my old room at $1 per week. The expenses of the sophomore year were $394.50. I earned during the year, including board, $87.20; received a scholarship of $70, and gifts amounting to $12.50, and borrowed $150, with all of which I just covered expenses.

"In my junior year I engaged a nice furnished room at $60 per year, which I agreed to pay for by work about the house. By clerical work, etc., I earned $37; also earned full board waiting upon table; received $70 for a scholarship; $55 from gifts; borrowed $70, which squared my accounts for the year, excepting $40 due on tuition. The expenses for the year, including, of course, the full value of board, room, and tuition, were $478.76.

"During the following summer I earned $40. Throughout the senior year I retained the same room, under the same conditions as the previous year. I waited on table all the year, and received full board; earned by clerical work, tutoring, etc., $40; borrowed $40; secured a scholarship of $70; took a prize of $25; received a gift of $35. The expenses of the senior year, $496.64 were necessarily heavier than these of previous years. But having secured a good position as teacher for the coming year, I was permitted to give my note for the amount I could not raise, and so was enabled to graduate without financial embarrassment.

"The total expense for the course was about $1,708; of which (counting scholarships as earnings) I earned $1,157."

Twenty-five of the young men graduated at Yale not long ago paid their way entirely throughout their courses. It seemed as if they left untried no avenue for earning money. Tutoring, copying, newspaper work, and positions as clerks were well-occupied fields; and painters, drummers, founders, machinists, bicycle agents, and mail carriers were numbered among the twenty-five.

In a certain district in Boston there are ten thousand students. Many of them come from the country and from factory towns. A large number come from the farms of the West. Many of these students are paying for their education by money earned by their own hands. It is said that unearned money does not enrich. The money that a student earns for his own education does enrich his life. It is true gold.

Every young man or woman should weigh the matter well before concluding that a college education is out of the question.

If Henry Wilson, working early and late on a farm with scarcely any opportunities to go to school, bound out until he was twenty-one for only a yoke of oxen and six sheep, could manage to read a thousand good books before his time had expired; if the slave Frederick Douglass, on a plantation where it was almost a crime to teach a slave to read, could manage from scraps of paper, posters on barns, and old almanacs, to learn the alphabet and lift himself to eminence; if the poor deaf boy Kitto, who made shoes in an alms-house, could become the greatest Biblical scholar of his age, where is the boy or girl to-day, under the American flag, who cannot get a fair education and escape the many disadvantages of ignorance?

"If a man empties his purse into his head," says Franklin, "no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest."

CHAPTER VIII

YOUR OPPORTUNITY CONFRONTS YOU—WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH IT?

Never before was the opportunity of the educated man so great as to-day. Never before was there such a demand for the trained man, the man who can do a thing superbly well. At the door of every vocation is a sign out, "Wanted—a man." No matter how many millions are out of employment, the whole world is hunting for a man who can do things; a trained thinker who can do whatever he undertakes a little better than it has ever before been done. Everywhere it is the educated, the trained man, the man whose natural ability has been enlarged, enhanced one hundredfold by superior training, that is wanted.

On all sides we see men with small minds, but who are well educated, pushing ahead of those who have greater capabilities, but who are only half educated. A one-talent man, superbly trained, often gets the place when a man with many untrained or half-trained talents loses it. Never was ignorance placed at such a disadvantage as to-day.

While the opportunities awaiting the educated man, the college graduate, on his entrance into practical life were never before so great and so numerous as to-day, so also the dangers and temptations which beset him were never before so great, so numerous, so insidious.

All education which does not elevate, refine, and ennoble its recipient is a curse instead of a blessing. A liberal education only renders a rascal more dishonest, more dangerous. Educated rascality is infinitely more of a menace to society than ignorant rascality.

Every year, thousands of young men and young women graduate full of ambition and hope, full of expectancy, go out from the schools, the colleges, and the universities, with their diplomas, to face for the first time the practical world.

There is nothing else, perhaps, which the graduate needs to be cautioned against more than the money madness which has seized the American people, for nothing else is more fatal to the development of the higher, finer instincts and nobler desires.

Wealth with us multiplies a man's power so tremendously that everything gravitates toward it. A man's genius, art, what he stands for, is measured largely by how many dollars it will bring. "How much can I get for my picture?" "How much royalty for my book?" "How much can I get out of my specialty, my profession, my business?" "How can I make the most money?" or "How can I get rich?" is the great interrogation of the century. How will the graduate, the trained young man or woman answer it?

The dollar stands out so strongly in all the undertakings of life that the ideal is often lowered or lost, the artistic suffers, the soul's wings are weighted down with gold. The commercial spirit tends to drag everything down to its dead, sordid level. It is the subtle menace which threatens to poison the graduate's ambition. Whichever way you turn, the dollar-mark will swing info your vision. The money-god, which nearly everybody worships in some form or other, will tempt you on every hand.

Never before was such pressure brought to bear on the trained youth to sell his brains, to coin his ability into dollars, to prostitute his education, as to-day. The commercial prizes held up to him are so dazzling, so astounding, that it takes a strong, vigorous character to resist their temptation, even when the call in one to do something which bears little relation to money-making speaks very loudly.

The song of the money-siren to-day is so persistent, so entrancing, so overwhelming that it often drowns the still small voice which bids one follow the call that runs in his blood, that is indicated in the very structure in his brain.

Tens of thousands of young people just out of school and college stand tiptoe on the threshold of active life, with high ideals and glorious visions, full of hope and big with promise, but many of them will very quickly catch the money contagion; the fatal germ will spread through their whole natures, inoculating their ambition with its vicious virus, and, after a few years, their fair college vision will fade, their yearnings for something higher will gradually die and be replaced by material, sordid, selfish ideals.

The most unfortunate day in a youth's career is that one on which his ideals begin to grow dim and his high standards begin to drop; that day on which is born in him the selfish, money-making germ, which so often warps and wrenches the whole nature out of its legitimate orbit.

You will need to be constantly on your guard to resist the attack of this germ. After you graduate and go out into the world, powerful influences will be operative in your life, tending to deteriorate your standards, lower your ideals, and encoarsen you generally.

When you plunge into the swim of things, you will be constantly thrown into contact with those of lower ideals, who are actuated only by sordid, selfish aims. Then dies the man, the woman in you, unless you are made of superior stuff.

What a contrast that high and noble thing which the college diploma stands for presents to that which many owners of the diploma stand for a quarter of a century later! It is often difficult to recognize any relationship between the two.

American-Indian graduates, who are so transformed by the inspiring, uplifting influences of the schools and colleges which are educating them that they are scarcely recognizable by their own tribes when they return home, very quickly begin to change under the deteriorating influences operating upon them when they leave college. They soon begin to shed their polish, their fine manners, their improved language, and general culture; the Indian blanket replaces their modern dress, and they gradually drift back into their former barbarism. They become Indians again.

The influences that will surround you when you leave college or your special training school will be as potent to drag you down as those that cause the young Indian to revert to barbarism. The shock you will receive in dropping from the atmosphere of high ideals and beautiful promise in which you have lived for four years to that of a very practical, cold, sordid materiality will be a severe test to your character, your manhood.

But the graduate whose training, whose education counts for anything ought to be able to resist the shock, to withstand all temptations.

The educated man ought to be able to do something better, something higher than merely to put money in his purse. Money-making can not compare with man-making. There is something infinitely better than to be a millionaire of money, and that is to be a millionaire of brains, of culture, of helpfulness to one's fellows, a millionaire of character—a gentleman.

Whatever degrees you carry from school or college, whatever distinction you may acquire in your career, no title will ever mean quite so much, will ever be quite so noble, as that of gentleman.

"A keen and sure sense of honor," says Ex-President Eliot, of Harvard University, "is the finest result of college life." The graduate who has not acquired this keen and sure sense of honor, this thing that stamps the gentleman, misses the best thing that a college education can impart.

Your future, fortunate graduate, like a great block of pure white marble, stands untouched before you. You hold the chisel and mallet—your ability, your education—in your hands. There is something in the block for you, and it lives in your ideal. Shall it be angel or devil? What are your ideals, as you stand tiptoe on the threshold of active life? Will you smite the block and shatter it into an unshapely or hideous piece; or will you call out a statue of usefulness, of grace and beauty, a statue which will tell the unborn generations the story of a noble life?

Great advantages bring great responsibilities. You can not divorce them. A liberal education greatly increases a man's obligations. There is coupled with it a responsibility which you can not shirk without paying the penalty in a shriveled soul, a stunted mentality, a warped conscience, and a narrow field of usefulness. It is more of a disgrace for a college graduate to grovel, to stoop to mean, low practises, than for a man who has not had a liberal education. The educated man has gotten a glimpse of power, of grander things, and he is expected to look up, not down, to aspire, not to grovel.

We cannot help feeling that it is worse for a man to go wrong who has had all the benefits of a liberal education, than it is for one who has not had glimpses of higher things, who has not had similar advantages, because where much is given, much is expected. The world has a right to expect that wherever there is an educated, trained man people should be able to say of him as Lincoln said of Walt Whitman, "There goes a man."

The world has a right to expect that the graduate, having once faced the light and felt its power, will not turn his back on it; that he will not disgrace his alma mater which has given him his superior chance in life and opened wide for him the door of opportunity. It has a right to expect that a man who has learned how to use skilfully the tools of life, will be an artist and not an artisan; that he will not stop growing. Society has a right to look to the collegian to be a refining, uplifting force in his community, an inspiration to those who have not had his priceless chance; it is justified in expecting that he will raise the standard of intelligence in his community; that he will illustrate in his personality, his finer culture, the possible glory of life. It has a right to expect that he will not be a victim of the narrowing, cramping influence of avarice; that he will not be a slave of the dollar or stoop to a greedy, grasping career: that he will be free from the sordidness which often characterizes the rich ignoramus.

If you have the ability and have been given superior opportunities, it simply means that you have a great commission to do something out of the ordinary for your fellows; a special message for humanity.

If the torch of learning has been put in your hand, its significance is that you should light up the way for the less fortunate.

If you have received a message which carries freedom for people enslaved by ignorance and bigotry, you have no right to suppress it. Your education means an increased obligation to live your life up to the level of your gift, your superior opportunity. Your duty is to deliver your message to the world with all the manliness, vigor, and force you possess.

What shall we think of a man who has been endowed with godlike gifts, who has had the inestimable advantage of a liberal education, who has ability to ameliorate the hard conditions of his fellows, to help to emancipate them from ignorance and drudgery; what shall we think of this man, so divinely endowed, so superbly equipped, who, instead of using his education to lift his fellow men, uses it to demoralize, to drag them down; who employs his talents in the book he writes, in the picture he paints, in his business, whatever it may be, to mislead, to demoralize, to debauch; who uses his light as a decoy to lure his fellows on the rocks and reefs, instead of as a beacon to guide them into port?

We imprison the burglar for breaking into our houses and stealing, but what shall we do with the educated rascal who uses his trained mind and all his gifts to ruin the very people who look up to him as a guide?

"The greatest thing you can do is to be what you ought to be."

A great man has said that no man will be content to live a half life when he has once discovered it is a half life, because the other half, the higher half, will haunt him. Your superior training has given you a glimpse of the higher life. Never lose sight of your college vision. Do not permit yourself to be influenced by the maxims of a low, sordid prudence, which will be dinned into your ears wherever you go. Regard the very suggestion that you shall coin your education, your high ideals into dollars; that you lower your standards, prostitute your education by the practise of low-down, sordid methods, as an insult.

Say to yourself, "If the highest thing in me will not bring success, surely the lowest, the worst, cannot."

The mission of the trained man is to show the world a higher, finer type of manhood.

The world has a right to expect better results from the work of the educated man; something finer, of a higher grade, and better quality, than from the man who lacks early training, the man who has discovered only a small part of himself. "Pretty good," "Fairly good," applied either to character or to work are bad mottoes for an educated man. You should be able to demonstrate that the man with a diploma has learned to use the tools of life skilfully; has learned how to focus his faculties so that he can bring the whole man to his task, and not a part of himself. Low ideals, slipshod work, aimless, systemless, half-hearted endeavors, should have no place in your program.

It is a disgrace for a man with a liberal education to botch his work, demoralize his ideals, discredit his teachers, dishonor the institution which has given him his chance to be a superior man.

"Keep your eye on the model, don't watch your hands," is the injunction of a great master as he walks up and down among his pupils, criticizing their work. The trouble with most of us is that we do not keep our eyes on the model; we lose our earlier vision. A liberal education ought to broaden a man's mind so that he will be able to keep his eye always on the model, the perfect ideal of his work, uninfluenced by the thousand and one petty annoyances, bickerings, misunderstandings, and discords which destroy much of the efficiency of narrower, less cultivated minds.

The graduate ought to be able to rise above these things so that he can use all his brain power and energy and fling the weight of his entire being into work that is worth while.

After the withdrawal of a play that has been only a short time on the stage, we often read this comment, "An artistic success, but a financial failure." While an education should develop all that is highest and best in a man, it should also make him a practical man, not a financial failure. Be sure that you possess your knowledge, that your knowledge does not possess you.

The mere possession of a diploma will only hold you up to ridicule, will only make you more conspicuous as a failure, if you cannot bring your education to a focus and utilize it in a practical way.

Knowledge is power only when it can be made available, practical.

Only what you can use of your education will benefit you or the world.

The great question which confronts you in the practical world is "What can you do with what you know?" Can you transmute your knowledge into power? Your ability to read your Latin diploma is not a test of true education; a stuffed memory does not make an educated man. The knowledge that can be utilized, that can be translated into power, constitutes the only education worthy of the name. There are thousands of college-bred men in this country, who are loaded down with knowledge that they have never been able to utilize, to make available for working purposes. There is a great difference between absorbing knowledge, making a sponge of one's brain, and transmuting every bit of knowledge into power, into working capital.

As the silkworm transmutes the mulberry leaf into satin, so you should transmute your knowledge into practical wisdom.

There is no situation in life in which the beneficent influence of a well-assimilated education will not make itself felt.

The college man ought to be a superb figure anywhere. The consciousness of being well educated should put one at ease in any society. The knowledge that one's mentality has been broadened out by college training, that one has discovered his possibilities, not only adds wonderfully to one's happiness, but also increases one's self-confidence immeasurably, and self-confidence is the lever that moves the world. On every hand we see men of good ability who feel crippled all their lives and are often mortified, by having to confess, by the poverty of their language, their sordid ideals, their narrow outlook on life, that they are not educated. The superbly trained man can go through the world with his head up and feel conscious that he is not likely to play the ignoramus in any company, or be mortified or pained by ignorance of matters which every well-informed person is supposed to know. This assurance of knowledge multiplies self-confidence and gives infinite satisfaction.

In other words, a liberal education makes a man think a little more of himself, feel a little surer of himself, have more faith in himself, because he has discovered himself. There is also great satisfaction in the knowledge that one has not neglected the unfoldment and expansion of his mind, that he has not let the impressionable years of youth go by unimproved.

But the best thing you carry from your alma mater is not what you there prized most, not your knowledge of the sciences, languages, literature, art; it is something infinitely more sacred, of greater value than all these, and that is your aroused ambition, your discovery of yourself, of your powers, of your possibilities; your resolution to be a little more of a man, to play a manly part in life, to do the greatest, grandest thing possible to you. This will mean infinitely more to you than all you have learned from books or lectures.

The most precious thing of all, however, if you have made the most of your chance, is the uplift, encouragement, inspiration, which you have absorbed from your teachers, from your associations; this is the embodiment of the college spirit, the spirit of your alma mater; it is that which should make you reach up as well as on, which should make you aspire instead of grovel—look up, instead of down.

The graduate should regard his education as a sacred trust. He should look upon it as a power to be used, not alone for his advancement, or for his own selfish ends, but for the betterment of all mankind. As a matter of fact, things are so arranged in this world that no one can use his divine gift for himself alone and get the best out of it. To try to keep it would be as foolish as for the farmer to hoard his seed corn in a bin instead of giving it to the earth, for fear he would never get it back.

The man who withholds the giving of himself to the world, does it at his peril, at the cost of mental and moral penury.

The way to get the most out of ourselves, or out of life, is not to try to sell ourselves for the highest possible price but to give ourselves, not stingily, meanly, but royally, magnanimously, to our fellows. If the rosebud should try to retain all of its sweetness and beauty locked within its petals and refuse to give it out, it would be lost. It is only by flinging them out to the world that their fullest development is possible. The man who tries to keep his education, his superior advantages for himself, who is always looking out for the main chance, only shrivels, and strangles the very faculties he would develop.

The trouble with most of us is that, in our efforts to sell ourselves for selfish ends or for the most dollars, we impoverish our own lives, stifle our better natures.

The graduate should show the world that he has something in him too sacred to be tampered with, something marked "not for sale," a sacred something that bribery cannot touch, that influence cannot buy. You should so conduct yourself that every one will see that there is something in you that would repel as an insult the very suggestion that you could be bought or bribed, or influenced to stoop to anything low or questionable.

The college man who is cursed with commonness, who gropes along in mediocrity, who lives a shiftless, selfish life, and does not lift up his head and show that he has made the most of his great privileges disgraces the institution that gave him his chance.

You have not learned the best lesson from your school or college if you have not discovered the secret of making life a glory instead of a sordid grind. When you leave your alma mater, my young friend, whatever your vocation, do not allow all that is finest within you, your high ideals and noble purposes to be suffocated, strangled, in the everlasting scramble for the dollar. Put beauty into your life, do not let your esthetic faculties, your aspiring instincts, be atrophied in your efforts to make a living. Do not, as thousands of graduates do, sacrifice your social instincts, your friendships, your good name, for power or position.

Whether you make money or lose it, never sell your divine heritage, your good name, for a mess of pottage. Whatever you do, be larger than your vocation; never let it be said of you that you succeeded in your vocation, but failed as a man.

When William Story, the sculptor, was asked to make a speech at the unveiling of his great statue of George Peabody, in London, he simply pointed to the statue and said, "That is my speech."

So conduct yourself that your life shall need no eulogy in words. Let it be its own eulogy, let your success tell to the world the story of a noble career. However much money you may accumulate, carry your greatest wealth with you, in a clean record, an unsullied reputation. Then you will not need houses or lands or stocks or bonds to testify to a rich life.

Never before did an opportunity to render such great service to mankind confront the educated youth as confronts you to-day. WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH IT?

CHAPTER IX

ROUND BOYS IN SQUARE HOLES

The high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man, is to be born with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment and happiness.—EMERSON.

There is hardly a poet, artist, philosopher, or man of science mentioned in the history of the human intellect, whose genius was not opposed by parents, guardians, or teachers. In these cases Nature seems to have triumphed by direct interposition; to have insisted on her darlings having their rights, and encouraged disobedience, secrecy, falsehood, even flight from home and occasional vagabondism, rather than the world should lose what it cost her so much pains to produce.—E. P. WHIPPLE.

I hear a voice you cannot hear,
Which says, I must not stay;
I see a hand you cannot see,
Which beckons me away.
TICKELL.

"James Watt, I never saw such an idle young fellow as you are," said his grandmother; "do take a book and employ yourself usefully. For the last half-hour you have not spoken a single word. Do you know what you have been doing all this time? Why, you have taken off and replaced, and taken off again, the teapot lid, and you have held alternately in the steam, first a saucer and then a spoon, and you have busied yourself in examining and, collecting together the little drops formed by the condensation of the steam on the surface of the china and the silver. Now, are you not ashamed to waste your time in this disgraceful manner?"

The world has certainly gained much through the old lady's failure to tell James how he could employ his time to better advantage!

"But I'm good for something," pleaded a young man whom a merchant was about to discharge for his bluntness. "You are good for nothing as a salesman," said his employer. "I am sure I can be useful," said the youth. "How? Tell me how." "I don't know, sir, I don't know." "Nor do I," said the merchant, laughing at the earnestness of his clerk. "Only don't put me away, sir, don't put me away. Try me at something besides selling. I cannot sell; I know I cannot sell." "I know that, too," said the principal; "that is what is wrong." "But I can make myself useful somehow," persisted the young man; "I know I can." He was placed in the counting-house, where his aptitude for figures soon showed itself, and in a few years he became not only chief cashier in the large store, but an eminent accountant.

You cannot look into a cradle and read the secret message traced by a divine hand and wrapped up in that bit of clay, any more than you can see the North Star in the magnetic needle. God has loaded the needle of that young life so it will point to the star of its own destiny; and though you may pull it around by artificial advice and unnatural education, and compel it to point to the star which presides over poetry, art, law, medicine, or whatever your own pet calling is until you have wasted years of a precious life, yet, when once free, the needle flies back to its own star.

"Rue it as he may, repent it as he often does," says Robert Waters, "the man of genius is drawn by an irresistible impulse to the occupation for which he was created. No matter by what difficulties surrounded, no matter how unpromising the prospect, this occupation is the only one which he will pursue with interest and pleasure. When his efforts fail to procure means of subsistence, and he finds himself poor and neglected, he may, like Burns, often look back with a sigh and think how much better off he would be had he pursued some other occupation, but he will stick to his favorite pursuit nevertheless."

Civilization will mark its highest tide when every man has chosen his proper work. No man can be ideally successful until he has found his place. Like a locomotive, he is strong on the track, but weak anywhere else. "Like a boat on a river," says Emerson, "every boy runs against obstructions on every side but one. On that side all obstruction is taken away, and he sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into an infinite sea."

Only a Dickens can write the history of "Boy Slavery," of boys whose aspirations and longings have been silenced forever by ignorant parents; of boys persecuted as lazy, stupid, or fickle, simply because they were out of their places; of square boys forced into round holes, and oppressed because they did not fit; of boys compelled to pore over dry theological books when the voice within continually cried "Law," "Medicine," "Art," "Science," or "Business"; of boys tortured because they were not enthusiastic in employments which they loathed, and against which every fiber of their being was uttering perpetual protest.

It is often a narrow selfishness in a father which leads him to wish his son a reproduction of himself. "You are trying to make that boy another you. One is enough," said Emerson. John Jacob Astor's father wished his son to be his successor as a butcher, but the instinct of commercial enterprise was too strong in the future merchant.

Nature never duplicates men. She breaks the pattern at every birth. The magic combination is never used but once. Frederick the Great was terribly abused because he had a passion for art and music and did not care for military drill. His father hated the fine arts and imprisoned him. He even contemplated killing his son, but his own death placed Frederick on the throne at the age of twenty-eight. This boy, who, because he loved art and music, was thought good for nothing, made Prussia one of the greatest nations of Europe.

How stupid and clumsy is the blinking eagle at perch, but how keen his glance, how steady and true his curves, when turning his powerful wing against the clear blue sky!

Ignorant parents compelled the boy Arkwright to become a barber's apprentice, but Nature had locked up in his brain a cunning device destined to bless humanity and to do the drudgery of millions of England's poor; so he must needs say "hands off" even to his parents, as Christ said to his mother, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?"

Galileo was set apart for a physician, but when compelled to study anatomy and physiology, he would hide his Euclid and Archimedes and stealthily work out the abstruse problems. He was only eighteen when he discovered the principle of the pendulum in a lamp left swinging in the cathedral at Pisa. He invented both the microscope and telescope, enlarging knowledge of the vast and minute alike.

The parents of Michael Angelo had declared that no son of theirs should ever follow the discreditable profession of an artist, and even punished him for covering the walls and furniture with sketches; but the fire burning in his breast was kindled by the Divine Artist, and would not let him rest until he had immortalized himself in the architecture of St. Peter's, in the marble of his Moses, and on the walls of the Sistine Chapel.

Pascal's father determined that his son should teach the dead languages, but the voice of mathematics drowned every other call, haunting the boy until he laid aside his grammar for Euclid.

The father of Joshua Reynolds rebuked his son for drawing pictures, and wrote on one: "Done by Joshua out of pure idleness." Yet this "idle boy" became one of the founders of the Royal Academy.

Turner was intended for a barber in Maiden Lane, but became the greatest landscape-painter of modern times.

Claude Lorraine, the painter, was apprenticed to a pastry-cook; Molière, the author, to an upholsterer; and Guido, the famous painter of Aurora, was sent to a music school.

Schiller was sent to study surgery in the military school at Stuttgart, but in secret he produced his first play, "The Robbers," the first performance of which he had to witness in disguise. The irksomeness of his prison-like school so galled him, and his longing for authorship so allured him, that he ventured, penniless, into the inhospitable world of letters. A kind lady aided him, and soon he produced the two splendid dramas which made him immortal.

The physician Handel wished his son to become a lawyer, and so tried to discourage his fondness for music. But the boy got an old spinet and practiced on it secretly in a hayloft. When the doctor visited a brother in the service of the Duke of Weisenfelds, he took his son with him. The boy wandered unobserved to the organ in a chapel, and soon had a private concert under full blast. The duke happened to hear the performance, and wondered who could possibly combine so much melody with so much evident unfamiliarity with the instrument. The boy was brought before him, and the duke, instead of blaming him for disturbing the organ, praised his performance, and persuaded Dr. Handel to let his son follow his bent.

Daniel Defoe had been a trader, a soldier, a merchant, a secretary, a factory manager, a commissioner's accountant, an envoy, and an author of several indifferent books, before he wrote his masterpiece, "Robinson Crusoe."

Wilson, the ornithologist, failed in five different professions before he found his place.

Erskine spent four years in the navy, and then, in the hope of more rapid promotion, joined the army. After serving more than two years, he one day, out of curiosity, attended a court, in the town where his regiment was quartered. The presiding judge, an acquaintance, invited Erskine to sit near him, and said that the pleaders at the bar were among the most eminent lawyers of Great Britain. Erskine took their measure as they spoke, and believed he could excel them. He at once began the study of law, in which he eventually soon stood alone as the greatest forensic orator of his country.

A. T. Stewart studied for the ministry, and became a teacher, before he drifted into his proper calling as a merchant, through the accident of having lent money to a friend. The latter, with failure imminent, insisted that his creditor should take the shop as the only means of securing the money.

"Jonathan," said Mr. Chase, when his son told of having nearly fitted himself for college, "thou shalt go down to the machine-shop on Monday morning." It was many years before Jonathan escaped from the shop, to work his way up to the position of a man of great influence as a United States Senator from Rhode Island.

It has been well said that if God should commission two angels, one to sweep a street crossing, and the other to rule an empire, they could not be induced to exchange callings. Not less true is it that he who feels that God has given him a particular work to do can be happy only when earnestly engaged in its performance. Happy the youth who finds the place which his dreams have pictured! If he does not fill that place, he will not fill any to the satisfaction of himself or others. Nature never lets a man rest until he has found his place. She haunts him and drives him until all his faculties give their consent and he falls into his proper niche. A parent might just as well decide that the magnetic needle will point to Venus or Jupiter without trying it, as to decide what profession his son shall adopt.

What a ridiculous exhibition a great truck-horse would make on the race-track; yet this is no more incongruous than the popular idea that law, medicine, and theology are the only desirable professions. How ridiculous, too, for fifty-two per cent. of our American college graduates to study law! How many young men become poor clergymen by trying to imitate their fathers who were good ones; of poor doctors and lawyers for the same reason! The country is full of men who are out of place, "disappointed, soured, ruined, out of office, out of money, out of credit, out of courage, out at elbows, out in the cold." The fact is, nearly every college graduate who succeeds in the true sense of the word, prepares himself in school, but makes himself after he is graduated. The best thing his teachers have taught him is how to study. The moment he is beyond the college walls he ceases to use books and helps which do not feed him, and seizes upon those that do.