"I shall study medicine," was the grave reply.
"But isn't that profession already overcrowded?" asked the friend.
"Possibly it is," said the youth, "but I purpose to study medicine all the same. Those who are already in the profession must take their chances."
In this joke of the newspapers there is a sound philosophy. Men of purpose never overcrowd. The crowd is around the foot of the staircase waiting for the elevator.
The old traveller, Rafinesque, tells us that when he was a boy he read the voyages of Captain Cook, Le Vaillant, Pallas, and Bougainville, and "my soul was fired to be a great traveller like them, and so I became such," he adds shortly.
If you say to yourself: "I will be a traveller, a statesman, an engineer;" if you never unsay it; if you bend all your powers in that direction; if you take advantage of all helps that come in your way and reject all that do not, you will sometime reach your goal. For the world turns aside to let any man pass who knows whither he is going.
"Why should we call ourselves men," said Mirabeau, "unless it be to succeed in everything, everywhere. Say of nothing: 'This is beneath me,' nor feel that anything is beyond your power, for nothing is impossible to the man who can will."
Do not say that I am expecting too much of the effects of a firm resolution, that I give advice which would lead to failure. For the man who will fail will never take a resolution. Those among you whom fate has cut out to be nobodies are the ones who will never try!
Even harmless pleasures hurt if they win you from your purpose. Lorimer's old merchant writes to his son at Harvard: "You will meet fools enough in the day without hunting up the main herd at night." This plain business man's advice is worth every young man's attention.
The Twentieth Century will ask for men of instant decision, men whose mental equipment is all in order, ready to be used on the instant. Yes and no, right and wrong, we must have them labelled and ready to pack to go anywhere, to do anything at any time, or to know why we refuse to do it, if it is something we will not do. Ethelred the Unready died helpless a thousand years ago. The unready are still with us, but the strenuous century will grant them but short shrift.