That is done soon enough which is done well. Soon ripe, soon rotten. He that would enjoy the fruit must not gather the flower. He who is impatient to become his own master is more likely to become his own slave. Better believe yourself a dunce and work away than a genius and be idle. One year of trained thinking is worth more than a whole college course of mental absorption of a vast series of undigested facts. The facility with which the world swallows up the ordinary college graduate who thought he was going to dazzle mankind should bid you pause and reflect. But just as certainly as man was created not to crawl on all fours in the depths of primeval forests, but to develop his mental and moral faculties, just so certainly he needs education, and only by means of it will he become what he ought to become,—man, in the highest sense of the word. Ignorance is not simply the negation of knowledge, it is the misdirection of the mind. "One step in knowledge," says Bulwer, "is one step from sin; one step from sin is one step nearer to Heaven."
CHAPTER VIII.
THE CONQUEST OF OBSTACLES.
Nature, when she adds difficulties, adds brains. —Emerson.
Exigencies create the necessary ability to meet and conquer them. —Wendell Phillips.
Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous difficulties. —Spurgeon.
The rugged metal of the mine
Must burn before its surface shine.
—Byron.
When a man looks through a tear in his own eye, that is a lens which opens reaches in the unknown, and reveals orbs no telescope could do. —Beecher.
No man ever worked his way in a dead calm. —John Neal.