impudent men, while men of retiring worth are overlooked. But it usually
happens that those forward men have that valuable quality of promptness
and activity, without which worth is a mere inoperative quality.

The conclusion of the whole matter is, that in this busy, bustling
period of the world's history self-confidence is almost an essential
trait of character in one who means to get along well and win his way to
success and fortune. This may exist entirely independent of
self-conceit, the two being by no means necessarily concomitant. He must
remember that he can not expect to have people repose confidence in his
ability unless he displays confidence in them himself. If poverty be his
lot, and troubles and discouragements of all kinds press upon him, let
him take heart and push resolutely ahead, cultivating a strong,
self-reliant disposition. By so doing he will rise superior to
misfortune. He will learn to rely on his own resources, to look within
himself for the means wherewith to combat the ills that press upon him.
By such a course of action he takes the road which most surely leads to
success.

[Illustration: PRACTICAL TALENTS.]

It is a common saying that the man of practical ability far surpasses
the theorist. Just what is meant by practical ability is, perhaps, hard
to explain. It is more easy to tell what it is not than what it is. It
recognizes the fact that life is action; that mere thoughts and schemes
will avail nothing unless subsequently wrought out in action. It is an
indescribable quality which results from a union of worldly knowledge
with shrewdness and tact. He that sets out on the journey of life with a
profound knowledge of books, but with a shallow knowledge of men, with
much of the sense of others, but with little of his own, will find
himself completely at a loss on occasions of common and constant
recurrence.

Speculative ability is one thing, and practical ability is another; and
the man who in his study or with his pen in hand shows himself capable
of forming large views of life and policy, may in the outer world be
found altogether unfitted for carrying them into practical effect.
Speculative ability depends on vigorous thinking, practical ability in
vigorous acting, and the two qualities are usually found combined in
very unequal proportions. The speculative man is prone to indecision; he
sees all sides of a question, and his action becomes suspended in nicely
weighing the arguments for and against, which are often found nearly to
balance each other; whereas the practical man overleaps logical
preliminaries and arrives at certain definite convictions, and proceeds
forthwith to carry his policy into action. The mere theorist rarely
displays practical ability; and, conversely, the practical man rarely
displays a high degree of speculative wisdom. If you try to carve a
stone with a razor, the razor will lose its edge, and the stone remain
uncut. A high education, unless it is practical as well as classical,
often unfits a man for contest with his fellow-man. Intellectual
culture, if carried beyond a certain point, is too often purchased at
the expense of moral vigor. It gives edge and splendor to a man, but
draws out all his temper.

In all affairs of life, but more especially in those great enterprises
which require the co-operation of others, a knowledge of men is
indispensable. This knowledge implies not only quickness of penetration
and sagacity, but many other superior elements of character; for it is
important to perceive not merely in whom we can confide, but to maintain
that influence over them which secures their good faith and defeats the
unworthy purpose of a wavering and dishonest mind. The world always
laughs at those failures which arise from weakness of judgment and
defects of penetration. Practical wisdom is only to be learned in the
school of experience. Precepts and instruction are useful so far as they
go; but without the discipline of real life they remain of the nature of
theories only. The hard facts of existence give that touch of truth to
character which can never be imparted by reading or tuition, but only by
contact with the broad instincts of common men and women.

Intellectual training is to be prized, but practical knowledge is
necessary to make it available. Experience gained from books, however
valuable, is of the nature of learning; experience gained from outward
life is wisdom; and an ounce of the latter is worth a pound of the
former. Rich mental endowments, thorough culture, great genius,
brilliant parts have often existed in company with very glaring
deficiencies in what may be called good judgment; while there is a
certain stability of judgment and soundness of understanding often
displayed by those who have not an extensive education. The old sailor
knows nothing of nautical astronomy. Azimuths, right ascensions, and the
solution of spherical triangles have no charm and little meaning to him.
But he can scan the seas and skies and warn of coming danger with a
natural wisdom which all the keen intellect and ready mathematics of the
young lieutenant do not afford. The man who has traveled much
accumulates a store of useful information, and can give hints of
practical wisdom which no deep study of geological lore or of
antiquarian research could afford. The student of life rather than of
books gains an understanding by experience for which no store of
erudition can prove an adequate compensation. The true order of learning
should be, first, what is necessary; second, what is useful; and third,
what is ornamental. To reverse this arrangement is like beginning to
build at the top of the edifice. Practical ability depends in a large
measure on the employment of what is known as common sense, which is the
average sensibility and intelligence of men undisturbed by individual
peculiarities. Fine sense and exalted sense are not half as useful as
common sense. There are forty men of wit for one man of sense, and he
that will carry nothing but gold will be every day at a loss for readier
change.

The height of ability consists in a thorough knowledge of the real value
of things and of the genius of the age we live in, and could we know by
what strange circumstances a man's genius becomes prepared for practical
success, we should discover that the most serviceable items in his
education were never entered in the bills his father paid for. That
knowledge of the world which inculcates strict vigilance in regard to
our individual interests and representation, which recommends the
mastery of things to be held in our own hands, or which enables us to
live undamaged by the skillful maneuvers and crafty plots of plausible
men on the one hand or uncontaminated by the depravities of unprincipled
ones on the other, is of daily acquisition and equally accessible to
all.

The most learned of men do not always make the best of teachers; the
lawyer who has achieved a classical education is not always the most
successful. The men who have wielded power have not always been
graduates. Brindley and Stephenson did not learn to read and write until
they were twenty years old; yet the one gave England her railroads, and
the other her canals. The great inventor is one who has walked forth
upon the industrial world, not from universities, but from hovels; not
as clad in silks and decked with honors, but as clad in fustian and
grimed with soot and oil. It is not known where he who invented the plow
was born, or where he died; yet he has effected more for the happiness
of the world than the whole race of heroes and conquerors who drenched
it in tears and blood, whose birth, parentage, and education have been
handed down to us with a precision proportionate to the mischief they
have done. Mankind owes more of its real happiness to this humble
inventor than to some of the most acute minds in the realm of
literature.

Education, indeed, accomplishes wonders in fitting a man for the work of
success, but we sometimes forget that it is of more consequence to have
the mind well disciplined rather than richly stored,—strong rather than
full. Every day we see men of high culture distanced in the race of life
by the upstart who can not spell. The practical dunce outstrips the
theorizing genius. Life teems with such illustrations. Men have ruled
well who could not define a commonwealth; and they who did not
understand the shape of the earth have commanded a greater portion of
it. The want of practical talent in men of fine intellectual powers has
often excited the wonder of the crowd. They are astonished that one who
has grasped, perhaps, the mightiest themes, and shed a light on the path
to be pursued by others, should be unable to manage his own affairs with
dexterity. But this is not strange. Deep thinking and practical talents
require habits of mind almost entirely dissimilar, and though they may,
and often do, exist conjointly, and while it is the duty of all to
strive to cultivate both, yet such is the constitution of the human mind
that it is apt to go to extremes. And he who accustoms himself to deep
prying into nature's secrets, to exploring the hidden mysteries of the
past, is too apt to forget the practical details of every-day life, to
pass them by with disgust, as altogether beneath his attention. This is
an error, and none the less reprehensible on that account than is the
conduct of those who become so engrossed with the practical affairs of
their calling or profession as to forget that they have a higher nature,
and sink the man in the pursuit of their ambitious dreams.

A man who sees limitedly and clearly is both more sure of himself and is
more direct in dealing with circumstances and with men than is a man who
has a large horizon of thought, whose many-sided capacity embraces an
immense extent of objects, just as the somnambulist treads with safety
where the wide-awake man could not hope to follow. Practical men cut the
knots which they can not untie, and, overleaping all preliminaries, come
at once to a conclusion. Men of theoretical knowledge, on the other
hand, are tempted to waste time in comparing and meditating when they
should be up and doing. Practical knowledge will not always of itself
raise a man to eminence, but for want of it many a man has fallen short
of distinction. Without it the best runner, straining for the prize,
finds himself suddenly tripped up and lying on his back in the midst of
the race. Without it the subtlest theologian will live and die in an
obscure country village, and the acutest legal mind fail of adorning the
bench. The man who lacks it may be a great thinker or a great worker. He
may be an acute reasoner and an eloquent speaker, and yet, in spite of
all this, fail of success. There is a hitch, a stand-still, a mysterious
want somewhere. Little, impalpable trifles weave themselves into a web
which holds him back. The fact is, he is not sufficiently in accord with
his surroundings. He has never seen the importance of adjusting his
scale of weights and measures to the popular standard. In a word, he is
not a man of the world, in a popular sense.

While it may be very difficult to define this practical ability, which
is so all-important, yet the path to be pursued by him who would advance
therein is visible to all. It requires a shrewd and careful observance
of men and things rather than of books. It requires that the judgment be
strengthened by being called upon in apparently trivial affairs. The
memory must be trained to recall principles rather than statements. All
the faculties of the mind must be trained to act with decision and
dispatch. Education must be regarded as a means and not as an end. By
these means, while admitting that practical talents are, in their true
sense, a gift of God, still we can cultivate and bring them to
perfection, and by education and experience convert that which before
lay dormant in the rough pebble into a dazzling diamond.

[Illustration: EDUCATION.]

From time immemorial intellectual endowments have been crowned with bays
of honor. Men have worshiped at the shrine of intellect with an almost
Eastern idolatry. Men of more than an average endowment of intellect
have been regarded as superior beings. The multitude have looked upon
them with wonder. With reverent hands the world at large has crowned
intellect with its richest honors. Its pathway has been strewn with
flowers; its brow has worn the loftiest plume; it has held the mightiest
scepter of power, and sat upon the proudest throne. Evidence mightier
than the plaudits of admiring multitudes is every-where found in the
universe proclaiming the worth and power of the human intellect. There
can not be a grander theme to engross the attention of all classes than
that subject which has to do with the training of the intellect. The
subject of education is fraught with a deep interest to all who have a
just appreciation of its merits. It should be of interest to all within
the pale of civilization, inasmuch as the happiness of all classes is
connected with the subject of education.

Education is development. It is not simply instruction, facts, and rules
communicated by the teacher, but it is discipline, a waking up, a
development of latent powers, a growth of the mind. It finds the child's
mind passive; it trains it to think independently; it awakens its powers
to observe, to reflect, to combine. It aims to bring into harmonious
action all the powers of the mind, not, as some suppose, a cultivation
of a few to the neglect of all the rest. Education should have reference
to the whole man—the body, the mind, and the heart. Its object, and,
when rightly conducted, its effect, is to make him a complete creature
of his kind. To his frame it would give vigor, activity, and beauty; to
his heart virtue; to his senses correctness and acuteness. The educated
man is not the gladiator, nor the scholar, nor the upright man alone,
but a well balanced combination of the three. The well-developed tree is
not one simply well rooted, nor with giant branches, nor resplendent
with rich foliage, but all of these together. If you mark the perfect
man you must not look for him in the gymnasium, the university, or the
Church exclusively, but you look for the healthful mind in the healthful
body, with a virtuous heart. The being in whom you find this union is
the only one worthy to be called educated.

Education, strictly speaking, covers the whole area of life. It is the
word which means all that God asks of us, all we owe the world or
ourselves. It expresses the sum total of human duty. Nor is it confined
to the present period of life. For aught we know education may be
continued in heaven. Reason may continue to widen its powers and deepen
its sanctities there. The affections may grow in beauty and fervor
through innumerable ages. Mind may expand and intensify through
eternity. Education is a work of progress. It begins in life, but has no
end. Death does not terminate it. We learn the elements of things below;
above, we will study their essence. We progress only by efforts.
Whatever expands the affection or enlarges the sphere of our sympathies,
whatever makes us feel our relation to the universe, to the great and
beneficial cause of all, must unquestionably refine our nature and
elevate us in the scale of being.

It requires extensive observation to enable us even partially to
appreciate the wonderful extent to which all the faculties are developed
by mental cultivation. The nervous system grows more vigorous and
active, the touch is more sensitive, and there is greater mobility to
the hand. Men are often like knives with many blades. They know how to
open one and only one; the rest are buried in the handle, and from
misuse become useless. Education is the knowledge of how to use the
whole of one's self. He is educated who knows how to make a tool of
every faculty, how to open it, how to keep it sharp, and how to apply it
to all practical purposes. Education is of three parts,—from nature,
from man, and from things. The development of our faculties and organs
is the education of nature; that of man is the application we learn to
make of this very developing; and that of things is the experience we
acquire in regard to different objects by which we are affected. All
that we have not at our birth, and all that we have acquired in the
years of our maturity, shows the need and effect of education. The power
of education is shown in that it hath power to give to children
resources that will endure as long as life endures, habits that time
will ameliorate but not destroy, in that it renders sickness tolerable,
solitude pleasant, age venerable, life more dignified and useful, and
death less terrible.

Education may be right or wrong, good or bad. Reason may grow strong in
error and revel in falsities. The heart may grow in vice, and the
passions expand in misrule. It has been wisely ordained that light
should have no color, water no taste, and air no odor; so knowledge
should be equally pure and without admixture. If it comes to us through
the medium of prejudice it will be discolored; through the channels of
custom, it will be adulterated; through the Gothic walls of the college
or of the cloister, it will smell of the lamp. It is not what a man
eats, but what he digests that makes him strong; not what he gains, but
what he saves that makes him rich; so it is not what he reads or hears,
but what he remembers and applies that makes him learned. He who knows
men and how to deal with them, whose mind by any means whatever has
received that discipline which gives to its action power and facility,
has been educated.

We can not be too careful to have our education proceed in the right
direction. It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as
to acquire his knowledge. Error is more hopeless than ignorance, for
error is always the more busy. Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we
can write, but error is a scribbled one, from which we must first erase.
Ignorance is content to stand still without advancing towards wisdom,
but error, more presumptuous, proceeds in the contrary direction.
Ignorance has no light to guide her, but error follows a false one. The
consequences are that error, when she retraces her footsteps, has a long
distance to go before she is in as good condition for the acquiring of
truth as ignorance.

A right conception of the value and power of wisdom is a great incentive
in stimulating us to proceed in the work of educating ourselves. It is
knowledge that has converted the world from a desert abode of savage men
to the beautiful homes of civilization. Human knowledge is permitted to
approximate, in some degree and on certain occasions, with that of the
Deity—its pure and primary source. And this assimilation is never more
conspicuous than when from evil it gathers its opposite good. What, at
first sight, appears to be so insurmountable an obstacle to the
intercourse of nations as the ocean? But knowledge has converted it into
the best and most expeditious means by which they may supply their
mutual wants and carry on their intimate communications. What so violent
as steam, or so destructive as fire? What so uncertain as the winds, or
so uncontrollable as the wave? Yet wisdom has rendered these
unmanageable things instrumental and subsidiary to the necessities, the
comforts, and even the elegancies of life. What so hard, so cold, so
insensible as marble? Yet the sculptors can warm it into life and bid it
breathe an eternity of love. What so variable as color, so swift as
light, or so empty as shade? Yet the painter's pencil can give these
fleeting fancies both a body and a soul; can confer upon them an
imperishable vigor, a beauty which increases with age, and which will
continue to captivate generations. In short, wisdom can draw expedients
from obstacles, invention from difficulties, remedies from poisons. In
her hands all things become beautiful by adaptation, subservient by
their use, and salutary by their application.

Since, then, intellectual attainments are so precious and wisdom so
grand in its achievements, he who neglects to improve his mental
faculties, or fails to train all his powers of mind and body, is not
walking in those paths that, under God's guidance, conduce most surely
to happiness and content. This can be done by all, since education is
within the reach of all, even the most humble. The youth who believes it
is impossible for him to get an education is deficient in courage and
energy. Too many have imbibed the idea that to obtain a sufficient
education to enable a man to appear advantageously upon the theater of
public life his boyhood and youth must be spent within the walls of some
classical seminary of learning, that he may commence his career under
the banner of a collegiate diploma, and with it win the first round in
the ladder of fame. That a refined, classical education is desirable all
will admit; that it is indispensably necessary does not follow. He who
has been incarcerated from his childhood to majority within the limited
circumference of his school and boarding room, though he may have
mastered all the classics, is destitute of that knowledge of men and
things indispensably necessary to enable him to act with vigor and
dispatch either in public or private life.

Classical lore and polite literature are very different from that vast
amount of practical intelligence, fit for every-day use, that one _must
have_ to render his intercourse with society pleasing to himself or
agreeable to others. Let boys and girls be taught first what is
necessary to prepare them for the common duties of life; then all that
can be gained from fields of classic lore or works of polite erudition
is of the utmost value. In this enlightened age ignorance is a voluntary
misfortune, for all who will may drink deeply at the fountain of
knowledge. By the proper improvement of time the mechanic's apprentice
may lay in a store of information that will enable him to take a stand
by the side of those persons who have grown up in the full blaze of a
collegiate education.

Learn thoroughly what you learn, be it ever so little, and you may speak
of it with confidence. A few well-defined facts and ideas are worth a
whole library of uncertain knowledge. We are frequently placed in
position where we can learn with scarcely an effort on our part, and yet
we hang back because it takes so long to acquire a mastery of any thing.
Let the end alone! Begin at the beginning, and though, after all, it
prove but a mere smattering, you are informed on one point more, and
your life will be happier for making the effort. By gaining an education
you shall have your reward in the rich stores of knowledge you have thus
collected, and which shall ever be at your command, more valuable than
material treasures. While fleets may sink, storehouses consume, and
riches fade, the intellectual stores you have thus gathered will be
permanent and enduring, as unfailing as the constant flow of Niagara—a
bank whose dividends are perpetual, whose wealth is undiminished,
however frequent the drafts upon it. How wise, then, to secure, as far
as possible, a complete and lasting education.

[Illustration: MENTAL TRAINING.]

The mind has a certain vegetative power which can not be wholly idle. If
it is not laid out and cultivated into a beautiful garden, it will shoot
up in weeds and flowers of a wild growth. From this, then, is seen the
necessity of careful mental cultivation—a training of all the faculties
in the right direction. This should be the first great object in any
system of education, public or private. The value of an education
depends far less upon varied and extensive acquirements than upon the
cultivation of just powers of thought and the general regulation of the
faculties of the understanding. That it is not the amount of knowledge,
but the capacity to apply it, which promises success and usefulness in
life, is a truth which can not be too often inculcated by instructors
and recollected by pupils. If youths are taught _how_ to think, they
will soon learn _what_ to think. Exercise is not more necessary to a
healthful state of the body than is the employment of the various
faculties of the mind to mental efficiency. The practical sciences are
as barren of useful products as the speculative where facts only are the
objects of knowledge, and the understanding is not habituated to a
continual process of examination and reflection.

It is the trained and disciplined intellect which rules the world of
literature, science, and art. It is knowledge put in action by trained
mental faculties which is powerful. Knowledge merely gathered together,
whether in books or in brains, is devoid of power, unless quickened into
life by the thoughts and reflections of some practical worker. But when
this is supplied knowledge becomes an engine of power. It is this which
forms the philosopher's stone, the true alchemy, that converts every
thing it touches into gold. It is the scepter that gives us our dominion
over nature; the key that unlocks the storehouse of creation, and opens
to us the treasures of the universe. It is this which forms the
difference between savage and civilized nations, and marks the
distinction between men as they appear in society. It is this which has
raised men from the humblest walks of life to positions of influence and
power.

The lack of mental training and discipline explains, in a large measure,
why we so often meet with men who are the possessors of vast stores of
erudition, and yet make a failure of every thing they try. We shall at
all times chance upon men of profound and recondite acquirements, but
whose qualifications, from a lack of practical application on their
owners' part, are as utterly useless to them as though they had them
not. A person of this class may be compared to a fine chronometer which
has no hands to its dial; both are constantly right without correcting
any that are wrong, and may be carried around the world without
assisting one individual either in making a discovery or taking an
observation. Every faculty of the mind is worthy of cultivation; indeed,
all must be cultivated, if we would round and perfect our mental powers
as to secure therefrom the greatest good. Memory must be ready with her
stores of useful knowledge, gathered from fields far and near. She must
be trained to classify and arrange them, so as to hold them in her
grasp. Observation must be quick to perceive the apparently trivial
events which are constantly occurring, and diligent to ascertain the
cause. The judgment must pronounce its decision without undue delay; the
will move to execution in accordance with the fiat of an enlightened
understanding.

This work of mental training, apparently so vast, is really so pleasant
and easy that it sweetens every day's life. There is no excuse for the
youth who is content to grow up to mature life and its duties with a
mind whose powers are untrained, and which has not received the
advantages of a practical education. Some may think they are excused by
poverty; but lack of means has not robbed them of a single intellectual
power. On the contrary, it sharpens them all. Has poverty shut them out
from nature, from truth, or from God? Wealth can not convert a dunce
into a genius. Gold will not store a mind with wisdom; more likely it
will fill it with folly. It may decorate the body, but it can not adorn
the soul. No business is so urgent but that time may be spent in mental
training. One can not well help thinking and studying; for the mind is
ever active. What is needful is to direct it to proper objects and in
proper channels, and it will cultivate itself. There is nothing to
prevent but the will. Whoever forms a resolute determination to
cultivate his mind will find nothing in his way sufficient to stop him.
If he finds barriers they only strengthen him by overcoming them.
Whoever lives to thirty years of age without cultivating his mind is
guilty of a great waste of time. If during that period he does not form
a habit of reading, of observation, and reflection, he will never form
such a habit, but go through the world none the wiser for all the
wonders that are spread around him. A small portion of that leisure time
which by too many is given to dissipation and idleness, would enable any
young man to acquire a very general knowledge of men and things. One can
live a life-time and get no instruction; but as soon as he begins to
look for wisdom it is given him. Even in the pursuits of practical,
every-day life numberless instances are constantly arising to aid in
mental training. There are few persons so engrossed by the cares and
labors of their calling that they can not give thirty minutes a day to
mental training; and even that time, wisely spent, will tell at the end
of a year. The affections, it is well known, sometimes crowd years into
moments; and the intellect has something of the same power. If you
really prize mental cultivation, or are deeply anxious to do any good
thing, you will _find_ time or _make_ time for it sooner or later,
however, engrossed with other employments. A failure to accomplish it
can only demonstrate the feebleness of your will, not that you lacked
time for its execution.

It is impossible to overestimate the importance of reading as a means of
training the mental faculties. It is by this means that you gather food
for thoughts, principles, and actions. If your books are wisely selected
and properly studied, they will enlighten your minds, improve your
hearts, and establish your character. To acquire useful information, to
improve the mind in knowledge and the heart in goodness, to become
qualified to perform with honor and usefulness the duties of life, and
prepare for immortality beyond the grave, are the great objects which
ought to be kept in view in reading.

There are four classes of readers. The first is like the hour-glass,
and, their reading being on the sand, it runs in and runs out, and
leaves no vestige behind. A second is like a sponge, which imbibes every
thing, and returns it in the same state, only a little dirtier. A third
is like a jelly-bag, allowing all that is pure to pass away, retaining
only the refuse and the dregs. The fourth is like the slaves in the
diamond-mines of Golconda, who, casting away all that is worthless,
obtain only pure gems.

We should read with discrimination. The world is full of books, no small
portion of which are either worthless or decidedly hurtful in their
tendency. And as no man has time to read every thing, he ought to make a
selection of the ablest and best writers on the subjects which he wishes
to investigate, and dismiss wholly from his attention the entire crowd
of unworthy and useless ones. Always read with your thoughts
concentrated, and your mind entirely engaged on the subject you are
pursuing. Any other course tends to form a habit of desultory, indolent
thought, and incapacitate the mind from confining its attention to close
and accurate investigation. One book read thoroughly and with careful
reflection will do more to improve the mind and enrich the understanding
than skimming over the surface of a whole library. The more one reads in
a busy, superficial manner, the worse. It is like loading the stomach
with a great quantity of food, which lies there undigested. It enfeebles
the intellect, and sheds darkness and confusion over all the operations
of the mind. The mind, like the body, is strengthened by exercise, and
the severer the exercise the greater the increase of strength. One hour
of thorough, close application to study does more to invigorate and
improve the mind than a week spent in the ordinary exercise of its
powers. We should read slowly, carefully, and with reflection. We
sometimes rush over pages of valuable matter because at a glance they
seem to be dull, and we hurry along to see how the story, if it be a
story, is to end.

At every action and enterprise ask yourself this question: What shall
the consequences of this be to me? Am I not likely to repent of it?
Whatever thou takest in hand, remember the end, and thou shalt never do
amiss. Take time to deliberate and advise, but lose no time in executing
your resolution. To perceive accurately and to think correctly is the
aim of all mental training. Heart and conscience are more than the mere
intellect. Yet we know not how much the clear, clean-cut thought, the
intellectual vision, sharp and true, may aid even these. Undigested
learning is as oppressive as undigested food; and, as with the dyspeptic
patient, the appetite for food often grows with the inability to digest
it, so in the unthinking patient an overweening desire to know often
accompanies the inability to know to any purpose. To learn merely for
the sake of learning is like eating merely for the taste of the food. To
learn in order to become wise makes the mind active and powerful, like
the body of one who is temperate and judicious in meat and drink.

Thought is to the brain what gastric juice is to the stomach—a solvent
to reduce whatever is received to a condition in which all that is
wholesome and nutritive may be appropriated, and that alone. Learning is
healthfully digested by the mind when it reflects upon what is learned,
classifies and arranges facts and circumstances, considers the relations
of one to another, and places what is taken into the mind at different
times in relation to the same subjects under their appropriate heads, so
that the various stores are not heterogeneously piled up, but laid away
in order, and may be examined with ease when wanted. This is the
perfection of mental training and discipline,—memory well trained,
judgment quick to act, and attention sharp to observe. We invite and
urge all to turn their attention to this subject as something worthy of
those endowed with reasoning powers. It is not a wearying task, but one
which repays for its undertaking by making much more rich in its joys
and inspiring in its hopes all the after-life of the man or woman who
went forth bravely to the work which heaven has decreed as the lot of
all who would enjoy the greatest good of life.

[Illustration: SELF-CULTURE.]

Man is a wonderful union of mind and body, and to form a perfect being a
high degree of cultivation is required for each component part. Those
who cultivate the mental to the exclusion of the mere bodily, or at
least carelessly pass by its claims, are no less in error than those who
cultivate the bodily faculties to the exclusion of the mental. The aim
of all attempts at self-cultivation should be the highest and most
appropriate development of the entire being—physical, intellectual, and
moral. It comprehends the health of the body, the expansion of the
intellect, the purification of the heart. It guards the health, because
a feeble body acts powerfully on the mind, and is a clog to its
progress. It cherishes the intellect, because it is the glory of the
human being. It trains the moral nature, because if that is weak and
misdirected a blight falls upon the soul and a curse rests upon the
body. As each faculty reacts upon all the others, true self-culture
attends with a due proportion of care to each. It strives to retain one
power whose action is too intense, and to stimulate another which is
torpid, until they act in delightful harmony with each other, and the
result is the healthful progress toward the highest point of attainable
good.

Self-culture includes a proper care of the health of the body. To be
careless of your health is to be stunted in intellect and miserable in
feelings. You might as well expect to enjoy life in a dilapidated and
ruined habitation, which affords free admission to the freezing
blast and the pitiless rain, as to be happy in a body ruined by
self-indulgence. The body is the home of the soul. Can its mysterious
tenant find rest and unmixed joy within its chambers if daily exposed to
sharp and shivering shocks through its aching joints or quivering
nerves? How many bright intellects have failed of making any impression
upon the world simply because they neglected the most obvious of
hygienic laws! If God has bestowed upon you the inestimable gift of good
health and a good constitution, it is your duty, as a rational creature,
to preserve it. To expect vigorous health and the enjoyment which it
brings, and at the same time live in open defiance of the laws of
health, is to expect what can not take place. Not only is good health
thus of value and one of the most important ends of self-cultivation,
but we would impress on all the fact that the body is just as important
a factor as the mind in the work of success, that it is just as worthy
to be cultivated, so as to grow in strength and beauty, and the
development of all those faculties which go to make a physically perfect
man or woman.

It is a sad sight to see a brilliant mind that has dragged down a strong
body, because it has been so imperious in its demands, leaving its
companion to suffer for lack of attention to some of its plainest wants.
It reminds one of a crazy building, tottering under its own weight, yet
full of the most costly machinery, which can be run, if at all, only
with the greatest caution, or the entire fabric will crumble to ruins.
The lesson can not be too soon learned that, while the human body is
most wonderfully complex in its organization, still such is the
perfection of all nature's works that all that is demanded of us is
compliance with simple rules, to enable us to enjoy health. That it is
our duty as well as our privilege to so train and cultivate the body
that it will answer readily all demands made upon it by an enlightened
mind, and will perform all its appropriate functions in the great work
of life.

Self-culture also implies suitable efforts to expand and strengthen the
intellect by reading, by reflection, and by writing down your thoughts.
The strength and vigor given to the mind by self-culture is not
materially different from that expressed by the term education in its
broad and comprehensive meaning. Intellect being the crowning glory and
chief attribute of man, there can be no nobler aim to set before one's
self than that of expanding and quickening all of its powers. Rightly
lived our every-day life and actions conduce to this result. Our
education is by no means entirely the product of organized schools. Our
hired teachers and printed books are not all that act on our powers to
develop them. Life is one grand school, and its every circumstance a
teacher. Society pours in its influence upon us like the thousand
streams that flood the ocean.

Scholastic men and women speak of book education; there is also a life
education—that great, common arena where men and women do battle with
the forces around them. Our duty is so to guide and control these
influences as to be educated in the right direction. We should recognize
the fact that we are educating all the time, and the great question for
us to settle is, "What manner of education are we receiving?" Some are
educated in vice, some in folly, some in selfishness, some in deception,
some in goodness, some in truth. Every day gives us many lessons in
life. Every thought leaves its impression on the mind. Every feeling
weaves a garment for the spirit. Every passion plows a furrow in the
soul. It is our duty as sentient, moral beings so to guide and direct
these thoughts, feelings, and passions that they shall educate us in the
right direction. We are lax in duty to ourselves to let the world
educate us as it will, for we are running a great risk to yield
ourselves up to the circumstances life has thrown about us, to plunge
into the stream of popular custom and allow ourselves to drift with the
current.

But aside from the practical education of everyday life we are to
remember, in our efforts after self-culture, that it is also obligatory
upon us to seek the discipline afforded by books and study. In the
pursuit of knowledge follow it wherever it is to be found; like fern, it
is the product of all climates, and, like air, its circulation is not
restricted to any particular class. Any and every legitimate means of
acquiring information is to be pursued, and all the odds and bits of
time pressed into use. Set a high price upon your leisure moments. They
are sands of precious gold; properly expended they will procure for you
a stock of great thoughts—thoughts that will fill, stir, invigorate,
and expand the soul. As the magnificent river, rolling in the pride of
its mighty waters, owes its greatness to the hidden springs of the
mountain nook, so does the wide, sweeping influence of distinguished men
date its origin from hours of privacy resolutely employed in efforts
after self-development.

We should esteem those moments best improved which are employed in
developing our own thoughts, rather than in acquiring those of others,
since in this kind of intellectual exercise our powers are best brought
into action and disciplined for use. Knowledge acquired by labor becomes
a possession—a property entirely our own. A greater vividness of
impression is secured, and facts thus acquired become registered in the
mind in a way that mere imparted information fails of securing. A habit
of observation and reflection is well-nigh every thing. He who has spent
his whole life in traveling may live and die a thorough novice in most
of the important affairs of life, while, on the other hand, a man may be
confined to a narrow sphere and be engrossed in the prosaic affairs of
every-day life, and yet have very correct ideas of the manners and
customs of other nations. He that studies only men will get the body of
knowledge without the soul; he that studies only books, the soul without
the body. He that to what he sees adds observation, and to what he
reads, reflection, is in the right road to knowledge, provided that in
scrutinizing the hearts of others he neglects not his own. Be not
dismayed at doubts, for remember that doubt is the vestibule through
which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom;
therefore, when we are in doubt and puzzle out the truth by our own
exertions, we have gained a something which will stay by us and serve us
again. But if to avoid the trouble of a search we avail ourselves of the
superior information of a friend, such knowledge will not remain with
us; we have _borrowed_ it and not _bought_ it.

But man possesses something more than a mere body and intellect; he is
the possessor of moral faculties as well. A true self-culture will be
none the less careful to have the actions of these refined and pure than
it is to possess physical health on the one hand and mental vigor on the
other. Indeed, since your happiness depends upon their healthful
condition more than upon the state of your body and intellect, your
first care should be devoted to giving careful attention to your moral
nature. With disordered moral faculties you will be as a ship without a
helm, dashed on bars and rocks at the will of winds and waves. It is the
vice of the age to substitute learning for wisdom, to educate the head,
and to forget that there is a more important education necessary for the
heart. Let the heart be opened and a thousand virtues rush in. There is
dew in one flower and not in another, because one opens its cup and
takes it in, while the other closes itself and the drop runs off. God
rains his goodness and mercy as widespread as the dew, and if we lack
them it is because we know not how to open our hearts to receive them.
No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It
is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich or poor according to what
he is, and not what he has. Cultivate your moral nature, then, as well
as bodily strength and mental vigor. The heart is the center of vitality
in the physical body; so the moral senses seem to give vitality to all
the various faculties of the mind. If the moral nature becomes stunted
in its development the mind is apt to become chaotic in its action. How
often we meet with examples of this character in the common walks of
life! Many lose their balance of mind and become wrecks from want of
_heart culture_. Is the _head_ of more importance than the _heart_? It
is true that wealth is the child of the one, but it is equally true that
happiness is the offspring of the other.

Such, then, is an outline of the great problem of self-culture. We can
not escape its claims; from the time reason dawns until death closes the
scene they are pressing upon you. Much of the happiness of life, both
here and hereafter, depends on how you meet its demands. You can, if you
but will it, grow apace in all that is manly or womanly in life; or, by
neglecting the claims of your manifold nature, as utterly fail of so
doing as the stunted shrub fails of being the stately tree with waving
branches and luxuriant foliage.

[Illustration: LITERATURE.]

The influence of literature upon a country is well-nigh incalculable.
The Druid warriors were incited to deeds of desperate valor by the songs
of their bards; and in modern times victories are achieved by the
writers of books no less important than many won on tented fields. The
literature of a nation molds the thoughts of a whole people, guides
their actions, and impresses its indelible mark upon the lives and
conduct of its citizens. Who can estimate the effect of Voltaire's
writings on the French people? The results for which many philanthropists
toiled in vain were achieved by the works of Dickens. The power of
books and literature is no less marked in the individual than in the
mass. To the weak, and to the strong in their times of weakness, books
are inspiring friends and teachers. Against the feebleness of
individual efforts they proclaim the victory of faith and patience,
and against the uncertainties and discouragement of one day's work
they set forth the richer and more complete life that results from
perseverance in right actions. It sets the mind more and more in
harmony with the noblest aims, and holds before it a crown of honor
and power.

There is a certain monotony in daily life, and there are those whose
aims are high, but who lack the inherent strength to stand true to them
amid adverse influences, and so gradually drop out of the ever-thinning
ranks of those who would wrest from Fame her richest trophies. They are
conquered by routine, and disheartened by the discipline and labor that
guard the prizes of life. Even to the resolute, persevering ones there
are hours of weakness and weariness. To all such literature comes with
its helping hand in hours of discouragement. It revives hope in the
minds of those almost discouraged, and brings the comforts of philosophy
to the cast-down. Books are a guide to youth and an inspiration for age.
They support us under solitude, and keep us from becoming a burden to
ourselves. They lessen our cares, compose our passions, and lay our
disappointments asleep. When weary of the living, we may, by their aid,
repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in
their conversation.

In books we live continually in the decisive moments of history, and in
the deepest experience of individual lives. The flowers which we cull
painfully and at long intervals in our personal history blossom in
profusion here, and the air is full of fragrance which touches our own
life only in its happier times. In our libraries we meet great minds on
an equality, and feel at ease with them. We come to know them better,
perhaps, than those who bear their names and sit at their tables. The
reserve that makes so many fine natures difficult of access is here
entirely lost. No carelessness of manner, no poverty of speech or
unfortunate personal peculiarity, mars the intercourse of author and
reader. It is a relation in which the exchange of thought is undisturbed
by outward conditions. We lose our narrow selves in the broader life
that is open to us. We forget the hindrance and limitation of our own
work in the full comprehension of that stronger life that can not be
bound nor confined, but grows in all soils, and climbs heavenward under
every sky.

Literature is the soul of action, the only sensible articulate voice of
the accomplished facts of the past. The men of antiquity are dead; their
cities are ruins; their temples are dust; their fleets and armies have
disappeared; yet all these exist in magic preservation in the literature
which they have bequeathed to us, and their manners and their deeds are
as familiar to us as the events of yesterday. Papers and books are
really the teachers, guides, and lawgivers of the world to-day. Their
influence is very much like that of a companion to whom we are attached.
Hence it is of more consequence to know what class to avoid than what to
choose; for good books are as scarce as good companions, and in both
instances all we can learn from bad ones is that so much time has been
worse than thrown away.

We should choose our books as we do our friends, for their sterling and
intrinsic merit, not for the accidental circumstances in their favor.
For, with books as with men, it seldom happens that their performances
are fully equal to their pretensions, nor their capital to their credit.
As we should always seek the companionship of the best class of people,
so we should always seek the companionship of the best books. He that
will have no books but such as are scarce evinces about as correct a
taste in literature as he would do in friendship who should have no
friends but those whom the rest of the world have discarded. Some books
we should make our constant companions and associates; others we should
receive only as occasional acquaintances and visitors. Some we should
take with us wherever we go; others we should leave behind us forever.
Some, of gilded outsides, are full of depravity, and we should shun them
as we would the actual vices which they represent. Some books we should
keep in our hands and lay on our hearts, while the best we could dispose
of others would be to throw them in the fire.

You may judge a man more truly by the books and papers that he reads
than by the company which he keeps, for his associates are in a measure
imposed upon him; but his reading is the result of choice; and the man
who chooses a certain class of books and papers unconsciously becomes
more colored in their views, more rooted in their opinions, and the mind
becomes trained to their way of thinking. All the life and feeling of a
young girl fascinated by some glowing love romance is colored and shaped
by the page she reads. If it is false and weak and foolish, she is false
and weak and foolish too; but if it is true and tender and inspiring,
then something of its truth and tenderness and inspiration will grow
into her soul, and will become a part of her very self. The boy who
reads of deeds of manliness, of bravery and noble doing, feels the
spirit of emulation grow within him, and the seed is planted which will
bring forth fruit of heroic endeavor and exalted life.

In literature our tastes will be discovered by what we give, our
judgment by that which we withhold. That writer does the most who gives
his readers the most knowledge and takes from them the least time, for
that period of existence is alone deserving the name of life which is
rationally employed. Those books are most profitable to read which make
the readers think most. Diminutive books, like diminutive men and women,
may be of greater value than they seem to be; but great tomes are
greatly dreaded. It is a saying that "books file away the mind." Much
reading is certainly not profitable without much meditation, and many
vigorous and profound thinkers have read comparatively little, though it
must be admitted most great minds have been very devout and ardent
readers. There is scarcely any thing that is not to be found in books,
but it does not follow that we shall find every thing in them unless we
handle them with great care.

A beautiful literature springs from the depths and fullness of
intellectual and moral life, from an energy of thought and feeling. It
deals with questions of life in a plain, practical manner. It holds up
the past for your inspection. It brings to light the secrets of nature.
It enables us to discover the infinity of things, the immensity of
nature, the wonders of the heavens, the earth, and the seas. Works of
fiction are the ornamental parts of literature and learning. They are
agreeable embellishments of the edifice, but poor foundations for it to
rest upon. The literature of the day is largely composed of newspapers
and periodicals. No one can too highly appreciate the magic power of the
press or too highly depreciate its abuse. Newspapers have become the
great highway of that intelligence which exerts a controlling power over
a nation, catering the every-day food of the mind. Show us an
intelligent family of boys and girls, and we will show you a family
where newspapers and periodicals are plenty. Nobody who has been without
these private tutors can know their educating power for good or for
evil. Think of the innumerable topics of discussion which they suggest
at the table; the important public measures with which the children thus
early become acquainted; of the great philanthropic questions to which,
unconsciously perhaps, their attention is called, and the general spirit
of intelligence which is evoked by these quiet visitors. This vast world
moves along lines of thought and sentiment and principles, and the press
gives to these wings to fly and tongues to speak.

[Illustration: MENTAL POWER.]

  "My mind to me a kingdom is;
  Such perfect joy therein I find
  As far exceeds all earthly bliss.
  Though much I want that most would have,
  Yet still my mind forbids to crave."

  —SIR EDMUND DYER.

The triumph of cultivated intellect over the forces of nature is indeed
a wonderful subject for contemplation. The most deadly poisons are made
to conduce to human health and welfare. Electricity does the writing and
talking, and annihilates space. Steam and iron are made to do the work
of nerves and muscles, and lay the four corners of the world under
contribution for our benefit. In view of these and many similar facts,
how full of meaning becomes the old saying, "Knowledge is power!"
Reason, like the magnetic influence imparted to iron, may be said to
give to matter properties and powers which it did not possess before;
but, without extending its bulk, augmenting its weight, or altering its
organization, it is visible only by its effects and perceptible only by
its operations.

Unlike those of the warriors, the triumphs of intellect derive all their
luster, not from the evil they have produced, but from the good. Her
successes and her conquests are the common property of the world, and
succeeding ages will be the watchful guardians of the rich legacies she
bequeathes. The trophies and titles of the conqueror are on the quick
march to oblivion, and amid that desolation where they were planted will
decay. As the mind must govern the hand, so in every society the man of
intelligence must direct and govern the man of ignorance. There is no
exception to this law. It is the natural sequence of the dominion of
mind over matter—a dominion so strong that for a time it can make flesh
and nerves impregnable, and string the sinews like steel, so that the
weak become strong. Some men of a secluded and studious life have sent
forth from their closet or cloister rays of intellectual light that have
agitated courts and revolutionized kingdoms, as the moon, that far
removed from the ocean, and shining upon it with a serene and sober
light, is the chief cause of all those ebbings and flowings which
incessantly disturb that world of waters.

The triumph of mind is shown in various ways. It enables us to surmount
difficulties with facility. Like imprisoned steam, the more it is
pressed, the more it rises to resist the pressure. The more we are
obliged to do, the more we are able to accomplish. Perhaps in no other
respect is the power of mind more signally shown than when it opens to
our view avenues of pleasure before unthought of. Happiness is the great
aim of life. In one form or another we are all striving for it. There
are no pleasures so pure as mental pleasures. We never tire of them. A
lofty mind always thinks loftily. It easily creates vivid, agreeable,
and natural fancies, places them in their best light, clothes them with
all appropriate adornments, studies others' tastes, and clears away from
its own thoughts all that is useless and disagreeable. Mental force or
power is not the inheritance of birth, nor the result of a few years'
spasmodic study; it is only acquired as the result of long and patient
exertion. There is no age at which it can not be increased. There is
absolutely no branch of literature which, when properly digested and
stowed away in the mind, will not show its effect in after life by
increased vigor in the whole mind. Those intellectually strong men and
women who have left their influence on the world's history are almost
without exception found to be those who have possessed broad and deep
acquirements; who have permitted no opportunity for obtaining
information to pass unimproved; who have been content for years to store
away knowledge, confident that in the fullness of time they would reap
the reward.

If any one would be the possessor of mental power he must be willing to
do his duty in obtaining it. There is a tendency to make the acquisition
of knowledge, at the present day, as easy as possible. The end proposed
is good, but the means employed are of doubtful utility. Instead of
toiling painfully on foot up the rugged steeps of learning the student
of to-day flies along a railway track, finding every cliff cut through
and every valley bridged. In this world nothing of value is to be
obtained without labor. So there are some who will question the value of
that education which is not born of patient perseverance and hard work.
As in the exercises of the gymnasium the value consists in the exertions
required to perform them, so that knowledge and mental power acquired by
arduous exertion is of the most lasting and real value. Let patient
toilers find a lesson of encouragement in this. What you thus painfully
acquire will prove of lasting benefit to you.

Mental power is seen in its best form only when all of the mental
faculties have been properly drilled and disciplined. The mind can not
grow to its full stature, nor be rounded into just proportions, nor
acquire that blended litheness, toughness, and elasticity which it
needs, if fed on one aliment. There is no profession or calling which,
if too exclusively followed, will not warp and contract the mind. Just
as if, in the body, a person resolves to be a rower, and only a rower,
the chances are that he will have, indeed, strong arms, but weak legs,
and eyes blinded by the glare of water. Or, if he desires to become an
athlete, he may be all muscles, with few brains. So, in the mind, if he
exercises but one set of faculties and neglects the rest, he may become
a subtle theologian or a sharp lawyer, a keen man of business, or a
practical mechanic, and though the possessor of power it is not power in
its highest and best form.

But for those who are anxious to obtain mental power, and for that
purpose devote the years of a life-time to patient study and reflection,
the rewards it offers are full compensation for all the hours of weary,
self-denying labor. Not only does it afford the best assurance of
success in life's battles and point out to its possessor means of
happiness denied to others, but it is so peculiarly the highest form of
power to which men can aspire that it commands the homage of all, and
reposes as a jewel in the crown of the true man or woman.

[Illustration: CHOICE OF COMPANIONS.]

The chameleon changes its color to agree with that of surrounding
objects. We all of us by nature possess this quality to such a degree
that our character, habits, and principles take their form and color
from those of our intimate associates. Association with persons wiser,
better, and more experienced than ourselves is always more or less
inspiring and invigorating. They enhance our knowledge of life. We
correct our estimate by theirs, and become partners in their wisdom. We
enlarge our field of observation through their eyes, profit by their
experience, and learn not only by what they have enjoyed, but—which is
still more instructive—from what they have suffered. If they are
stronger than ourselves, we become participators in their strength.
Hence companionship with the wise and energetic never fails to have a
most valuable influence on the formation of character—increasing our
resources, strengthening our resolves, elevating our aims, and enabling
us to exercise greater dexterity and ability in our own affairs, as well
as more effective helpfulness in those of others.

Young men are in general but little aware how much their reputation is
affected in the view of the public by the company they keep. The
character of their associates is soon regarded as their own. If they
seek the society of the worthy and the respectable, it elevates them in
the public estimation, as it is an evidence that they respect
themselves, and are desirous to secure the respect of others. On the
contrary, intimacy with persons of bad character always sinks a young
man in the eyes of the public. While he, in intercourse with such
persons, thinks but little of the consequences, others are making their
remarks. They learn what his taste is, what sort of company he prefers,
and predict, on no doubtful ground, what will be the result to his own
principles and character. It is they only who are elevated in mind,
character, and position, who can lift us up; while the ignoble,
degraded, and debased only drag us down. We may be deprived of the
advantages of better and superior associations at some time or another,
but, unless we seek for them, we shall not profit by them, nor be
acknowledged to be worthy of them.

No man of position can allow himself to associate, without prejudice,
with the profane, the Sabbath-breaking, the drunken, and the licentious;
for he lowers himself, without elevating them. The sweep is not made the
less black by rubbing against the well-dressed and the clean, while they
are inevitably defiled. Keep company with persons rather above than
below yourself; for gold in the same pocket with silver loseth both of
its weight and color. Nothing elevates us so much as the presence of a
spirit similar, yet superior, to our own. What is companionship where
nothing that improves the intellect is communicated, and where the
larger heart contracts itself to the mold and dimensions of the smaller?
In all society it is advisable to associate, if possible, with the
highest; not that the highest are always the best, but because, if
disgusted there, you can at any time descend; but if we begin at the
lowest, to ascend is impossible. It should be the aim of the young man
to seek the society of the wise, the intelligent, and the good. It is
always safe to be found in the society of those who, with a good heart,
combine intelligence and an ability to impart information. If you wish
to be respected, if you desire happiness and not misery, associate only
with the intelligent and good. Once habituate yourself to a virtuous
course, once secure a love of good society, and no punishment would be
greater than, by accident, to be obliged to associate, even for a short
time, with the low and vulgar.

He that sinks into familiarity with persons much below his own level
will be constantly weighed down by his base connections, and, though he
may easily sink lower, he will find it hard to rise again. Better be
alone than in bad company. "Evil communications corrupt good manners."
Ill qualities are catching as well as diseases, and the mind is at least
as much, if not a great deal more, liable to infections than the body.
Go with mean people and you think life is mean. Society is the
atmosphere of souls, and we necessarily imbibe something which is either
infectious or salubrious. The society of virtuous persons is enjoyed
beyond their company, and vice carries a sting even into solitude. The
society you keep is both the indicator and former of your character. In
company, when the pores of the mind are all opened, there requires more
guard than usual, because the mind is then passive. In vicious company
you will feel your reverence for the dictates of conscience wear off.
The name at which angels bow and devils tremble you will hear contemned
and abused. The Bible will supply materials for unmeaning jests or
impious buffoonery. The consequences will be a practical deviation into
vice—the principle will become sapped and the fences of conscience
broken down.

It is not alone the low and dissipated, the vulgar and profane, from
whose example and society you are in danger. These persons of reputation
will despise and shun. But there are persons of apparently decent
morals, of polished manners and interesting talents, but who, at the
same time, are unprincipled and wicked, who make light of sacred things,
scoff at religion, and deride the suggestions and scruples of a tender
conscience as superstition,—these are the persons whose society and
influence are most to be feared. Their breath is pollution; their
embrace, death. Unhappily there are many of this description. They mark
out their unwary victims: they gradually draw them into their toils;
they strike the deadly fang, infuse the poison, and exult to see
youthful virtue and parental hope wither and expire under their ruffian
example. Many a young man has thus been led on by his elders in iniquity
till he has been initiated into all the mysteries of debauchery and
crime, and ended his days a poor, outcast wretch.

Live with the culpable and you will be apt to die with the criminal. Bad
company is like a nail driven into a post, which, after the first or
second blow, may be drawn out with little difficulty, but, being driven
in to the head, it can only be withdrawn by the destruction of the wood.
Be you ever so pure-minded yourself you can not associate with bad
companions without falling into bad odor. Evil company is like tobacco
smoke—you can not be long in its presence without carrying away a taint
of it. "Let no man deceive himself," says Petrarch, "by thinking that
the contagions of the soul are less than those of the body. They are yet
greater; they sink deeper and come on more unsuspectedly." From impure
air we take diseases; from bad company, vice and imperfections. Avoid,
as far as you can, the company of all vicious persons whatsoever, for no
vice is alone, and all are infectious.

Good company not only improves our manners, but also our minds, and
intelligent associates will become a source of enjoyment as well as of
edification. Good company is that which is composed of intelligent and
well-bred persons, whose language is chaste and good, whose sentiments
are pure and edifying, whose deportment is such as pure and
well-regulated education and correct morals dictate, and whose conduct
is directed and restrained by the pure precepts of religion. When we
have the advantages of such company it should then be the object of our
zeal to imitate their real excellencies, copy their politeness, their
carriage, their address, and the easy, well-bred turn of their
conversation; but we should remember that, let them shine ever so
bright, their vices are so many blemishes upon their character which we
should no more think of endeavoring to imitate than we should to make
artificial warts upon our faces because some distinguished person
happened to have one there by nature.

Water will seek its level. So do the various elements of society. Tell
us whom you prefer as companions and we can tell who you are like. Do
you love the society of the vulgar? Then you are already debased in your
sentiments. Do you seek to be with the profane? In your heart you are
like them. Are jesters and buffoons your choice companions? He who loves
to laugh at folly is himself a fool. Do you love and seek the society of
the wise and good? Is this your habit? Had you rather take the lowest
seat among these than the highest seat with others? Then you have
already learned to be good. You may not make very rapid progress, but
even a good beginning is not to be despised. Hold on your way, and seek
to be the companion of those that fear God. So shall you be wise for
yourself and wise for eternity.

 [Illustration: Engraved & Printed by Illman Brothers.
 FRIENDSHIP.]

[Illustration: FRIENDS.]

  "There are a thousand nameless ties,
    Which only such as feel them know,
  Of kindred thoughts, deep sympathies,
    And untold fancy spells, which throw
  O'er ardent minds and faithful hearts
    A chain whose charmed links so blend
  That the bright circlet but imparts
    Its force in these fond words—'_My Friend!_'"

Friendship is the sweetest and most satisfactory connection in life. It
has notable effect upon all states and conditions. It relieves our
cares, raises our hopes, and abates our fears. A friend who relates his
successes talks himself into a new pleasure, and by opening his
misfortunes leaves a part of them behind him. Friendship improves
happiness and abates misery, by doubling our joys and dividing our
griefs. Charity is friendship in common, and friendship is charity
inclosed. It is a sweet attraction of the heart towards the merit we
esteem or the perfection we admire, and produces a mutual inclination
between two or more persons to promote each others' interests,
knowledge, virtue, and happiness.

The language of friendship is as varied as the wants and weaknesses of
humanity. To the timid and cautious it speaks words of encouragement. To
the weak it is ready to extend a helping hand. To the bold and
venturesome it whispers words of caution. It is ready to sympathize with
the sorrowing one, and to rejoice with those of good cheer. Friendship
is not confined to any particular class of society or any particular
geographical locality. No surveyed chart, no natural boundary line, no
rugged mountain or steep declining vale puts a limit to its growth.
Wherever it is watered with the dews of kindness and affection, there
you may be sure to find it. Allied in closest companionship with its
twin sister, Charity, it enters the abode of sorrow and wretchedness,
and causes happiness and peace. Its influence dispels every poisoned
thought of envy, and spreads abroad in the mind a contentment which all
the powers of the mind could not otherwise bestow. True friendship will
bloom only in the soil of a noble and self-sacrificing heart. There it
enjoys perpetual Summer, diffusing a sweet atmosphere of love, peace,
and joy to all around.

No man can go very far with strength and courage, if he goes alone
through the weary struggles of life. We are made to be happier and
better by each other's notice and appreciation, and the hearts that are
debarred from those influences invariably contract and harden. Here and
there we find persons who, from pride or singularity of disposition,
affect to be altogether independent of the notice or regard of their
fellow-beings; but never yet was there constituted a human heart that
did not at some time, in some tender and yearning hour, long for the
sympathy of other hearts. Instead of striving to conceal this feeling,
it should be regarded as one possessing true nobility. True friendship
can only be molded by the experience of time. The attractive face, the
winning tongue, or the strong need of some passer-by, is not the
permanent test of the union of hearts. We want a more substantial proof
than any of these. A thousand transitory friends meet us along the
crowded thoroughfares of life; but when we come to try their durability
in the sieve of experience, alas, how many fall through! There have been
times in the life of every man when he has been willing to stake
reputation, credit, _all_, on the true friendship of some companion; but
he turns to find his idol clay, the gold but dross. Few persons are so
fortunate as to secure in the course of life the happiness and
advantages of one efficient and devoted friend. It is all that many aim
at, seek, and ask to have, and is worth a whole caravan of those
lukewarm and treacherous souls who, indeed, profess to be attached to
us, but whose affection is so uncertain and unstable that we fear to put
it to the test of trial lest we lose it forever.

Concerning the one you call your friend, tell us, will he weep with you
in your hours of distress? Will he faithfully reprove you to your face
for actions for which others are ridiculing and censuring you behind
your back? Will he dare to stand forth in your defense when detraction
is secretly aiming its weapon at your reputation? Will he acknowledge
you with the same cordiality and behave to you with the same friendly
attention in the company of your superiors in rank and fortune as when
the claims of pride do not interfere with those of friendship? If
misfortune and loss should oblige you to retire into a walk of life in
which you can not appear with the same liberality as formerly, will he
still think himself happy in your society, and instead of withdrawing
himself from an unprofitable connection, take pleasure in professing
himself your friend, and cheerfully assist you to support the burden of
your afflictions? When sickness shall call you to retire from the busy
world, will he follow you to your gloomy retreat, listen with attention
to your tale of suffering, and administer the balm of consolation to
your fainting spirit? And, lastly, when death shall burst asunder every
earthly tie, will he shed a tear upon your grave, and lodge the dear
remembrance of your mutual friendship in his heart? If so, then grapple
him to your heart with hooks of steel; and you shall know the privilege
of having one true friend.

Friendship is a vase which, when it is flawed by violence or accident,
may as well be broken at once; it never can be trusted after. The more
graceful and ornamental it was, the more clearly do we discern the
hopelessness of restoring it to its former state. Coarse stones, if they
are fractured, may be cemented again; precious ones never. It is a great
thing to cover the blemishes and to excuse the faults of a friend; to
draw a curtain before his stains; to bury his weakness in silence, but
to proclaim his virtues upon the housetop. Prosperity is no just scale;
adversity is the only true balance to weigh friends in. True friendship
must withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the
name, since friendships which are born in adversity are more firm and
lasting than those formed in happiness, as iron is more strongly united
the fiercer the flames. One has never the least difficulty in finding a
devoted friend except when he needs one. Real friends are wont to visit
us in prosperity only when invited, but in adversity they come of their
own accord. A friend is not known in prosperity, but can not be hidden
in adversity. If we lack the sagacity to discriminate wisely between our
acquaintances and our friends, misfortune will readily do it for us.
Prosperity gains friends, and adversity tries them. False friends are
like our shadows—keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but
leaving us the instant we cross into the shade. False friendship, like
the ivy, decays and ruins the walls it embraces; but true friendship
gives new life and animation to the object it supports.

The hardest trials of those who fall from affluence to poverty and
obscurity is the discovery that the attachment of so many in whom they
confided was a pretense, a mask to gain their own ends, or was a
miserable shallowness. Sometimes, doubtless, it is with regret that
these frivolous followers of the world desert those upon whom they have
fawned; but they soon forget them. Flies leave the kitchen when the
dishes are empty. The parasites that cluster about the favorites of
fortune to gather his gifts and climb by his aid, linger with the
sunshine, but scatter at the approach of a storm, as the leaves cling to
a tree in Summer weather, but drop off at the breath of Winter. Like
ravens settled down for a banquet and suddenly scared away by a noise,
how quickly at the first sound of calamity the superficial friends are
up and away. Cling to your friends after having chosen them with proper
caution. If they reprove you, thank them; if they grieve you, forgive
them; if circumstances have torn them from you, circumstances may change
and make them yours again. Be very slow to give up an old and tried
friend. A true friend is such a rare thing to have that you are blessed
beyond the majority of men if you possess but one such. The first law of
friendship is sincerity, and he who violates this law will soon find
himself destitute of that which he sought.

The death of a friendship is always a tragical affair. Sometimes it
cools from day to day, warm confidence gradually giving place to cold
civility, and these in turn swiftly becoming icy husks of neglect and
repugnance. Sometimes its remembrances touch us with a pang, or we stand
at its grave sobbing, wounded with a grief whose balsam never grew. The
hardest draught in the cup of life is wrung from betrayed affection,
when the guiding light of friendship is quenched in deception, and the
gloom that surrounds our path grows palpable. Let one find cold repulse
or mocking treachery where he expected the greeting of friendship, and
it is not strange that he feels crushed with the discovery.

Old friends! What a multitude of deep and varied emotions are called up
from the soul by the utterance of these two words! What thronging
memories of other days crowd the brain when they are spoken! Oh, there
is magic in their sound, and the spell it evokes is both sad and
pleasing. When reverie brings before us in quick succession the scenes
of by-gone years, how do the features of olden friends, dim and shadowy
as the grave in which many of them are laid, flit before us! How they
carry us to other scenes and other places! The thoughts which fill the
mind when thus musing on the past are always of a chastened kind. In the
scenes of the past we behold a type of the future. The fate of our
friends shadows forth our own, and we are indeed dull if we fail to
arise from fancied communication with old friends wiser and better men
and women.

[Illustration: POWER OF CUSTOM.]

There are many who find themselves in the toils of an evil custom who
would most willingly give money and time to be free from its control.
Montaigne says, "Custom is a violent and treacherous school-mistress.
She, by little and little, slyly and unperceivedly slips in the foot of
her authority; but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the
benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious
and tyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or
the power to lift up our eyes." Custom is the law of one class of people
and fashion of another; but the two parties often clash, for precedence
is the legislator of the first and novelty of the second. Custom,
therefore, looks to things that are past, and fashion to things that are
present; but both are somewhat purblind as to things that are to come.
Of the two, fashion imposes the heaviest burdens, for she cheats her
votaries of their time, their fortune, and their comforts, and she
repays them only with the celebrity of being ridiculed and despised—a
very paradoxical mode of payment, yet always most thankfully received.

It is surprising to what an extent our likes and dislikes are creatures
of custom. Our modes of belief, thoughts, and opinions are molded and
shaped by what has been the prevailing mode of thinking heretofore.
Though we are, indeed, not so given to the worship of past institutions
as some people, yet we all acknowledge the prevailing power of custom,
of personal habits, and of fashions. We dare not stand alone in any
matter of concern, but wish to be in company of those similarly minded.
The law of opinion goes forth. We do not ask who promulgates it, but
fall into the ranks of its followers and worshipers. We are whirled in
the giddy ranks and blinded by the dazzling lights. Novelty is the show,
conformity is the law—and life a trance, until at last we awake from it
to find that we have been the victims of a fatal folly and a bewildering
dream.

Habit is man's best friend or worst enemy. It can exalt him to the
highest pinnacle of virtue, honor, or happiness, or sink him to the
lowest depths of vice, shame, and misery. If we look back upon the usual
course of our feelings we shall find that we are more influenced by the
frequent recurrence of objects than by their weight and importance, and
that habit has more force in forming our character than our opinions.
The mind naturally takes its tone and complexion from what it habitually
contemplates. "Whatever may be the cause," says Lord Kames, "it is an
established fact that we are much influenced by custom. It hath an
effect upon our pleasures, upon our actions, and even upon our thoughts
and sentiments." Habit makes no figure during the vivacity of youth, in
middle age it gains ground, and in old age governs without control. In
that period of life, generally speaking, we eat at a certain hour, take
exercise at a certain time, all by the direction of habit; nay, a
particular seat, table, and bed comes to be essential, and a habit in
any of these can not be contradicted without uneasiness. Man, it has
been said, is a bundle of habits, and habit is a second nature.
Metastasio entertained so strong an opinion as to the power of
repetition in act and thought that he said, "All is habit in mankind,
even virtue itself."

Beginning with single acts habit is formed slowly at first, and it is
not till its spider's thread is woven in a thick cable that its
existence is suspected. Then it is found that beginning in cobwebs it
ends in chains. Gulliver was bound as fast by the Lilliputians with
multiplied threads as if they had used ropes. "Like flakes of snow that
fall unperceivedly upon the earth," says Jeremy Bentham, "the seemingly
unimportant events of life succeed one another." As the snow gathers so
are our habits formed; no single flake that is added to the pile
produces a sensible change; no single action creates, however it may
exhibit, a man's character. But as the tempest hurls the avalanche down
the mountain and overwhelms the inhabitant and his habitation, so
passion, acting upon the elements of mischief which pernicious habits
have brought together by imperceptible accumulation, may overthrow the
edifice of truth and virtue.

The force of habit renders pleasant many things which at first were
intensely disagreeable or even painful. Walking upon the quarter-deck of
a vessel, though felt at first to be intolerably confined, becomes, by
repetition, so agreeable to the sailor that, in his walks on shore, he
often hems himself within the same bounds. Arctic explorers become so
accustomed to the hardships incident to such a life that they do not
enjoy the comforts of home when they return. So powerful is the effect
of constant repetition of action that men whose habits are fixed may
almost be said to have lost their free agency. Their actions become of
the nature of fate, and they are so bound by the chains which they have
woven for themselves that they do that which they have been accustomed
to do even when they know it can yield neither pleasure nor profit.

Those who are in the power of an evil habit must conquer it as they can,
and conquered it must be, or neither wisdom nor happiness can be
obtained; but those who are not yet subject to their influence may, by
timely caution, preserve their freedom. They may effectually resolve to
escape the tyrant whom they will vainly resolve to conquer. Be not slow
in the breaking of a sinful custom; a quick, courageous resolution is
better than a gradual deliberation; in such a combat he is the bravest
soldier who lays about him without fear or wit. Wit pleads; fear
disheartens. He who would kill hydra had better strike off one neck than
five heads,—fell the tree and the branches are soon cut off. Vicious
habits are so great a strain on human nature, said Cicero, and so odious
in themselves that every person actuated by right reason would avoid
them, though he were sure they would always be concealed both from God
and man and had no future punishment entailed on them. Vicious habits,
when opposed, offer the most vigorous resistance on the first attack; at
each successive encounter this resistance grows weaker, until, finally,
it ceases altogether, and the victory is achieved.

Such being the power of habit all can plainly see the importance of
forming habits of such a nature that they shall constantly tend to
increase our happiness, and to render more sure and certain that success
the attaining of which is the object of all our endeavors. We may form
habits of honesty or knavery, frugality or extravagance, of patience or
impatience, self-denial or self-indulgence. In short, there is not a
virtue nor a vice, not an act of body nor of mind, to which we may not
be chained by this despotic power. It has been truly said that even
happiness may become habitual. One may acquire the habit of looking upon
the sunny side of things, or of looking upon the gloomy side. He may
accustom himself, by a happy alchemy, to transmute the darkest events
into materials for hopes. Hume, the historian, said that the habit of
looking at the bright side of things was better than an income of a
thousand pounds a year.

Habits which are to be commended are not to be formed in a day, nor by a
few faint resolutions, not by accident, not by fits and starts—being
one moment in a paroxysm of attention and the next falling into the
sleep of indifference—are they to be obtained, but by steady,
persistent efforts. Above all, it is necessary that they should be
acquired in youth, for then do they cost the least effort. Like letters
cut in the bark of a tree, they grow and widen with age. Once obtained
they are a fortune of themselves, for their possessor has disposed
thereby of the heavier end of the load of life; all the remaining he can
carry easily and pleasantly. On the other hand, bad habits, once formed,
will hang forever on the wheels of enterprise, and in the end will
assert their supremacy, to the ruin and shame of their victim.

[Illustration: PERSONAL INFLUENCE.]

  "I shot an arrow in the air;
  It fell on earth, I knew not where.
  I breathed a song into the air;
  It fell on earth, I knew not where.
  Long, long afterwards, in an oak,
  I found the arrow still unbroke,
  And the song, from beginning to end,
  I found again in the heart of a friend."

  —H. W. LONGFELLOW.

Influence is to a man what flavor is to fruit, or fragrance to the
flower. It does not develop strength or determine character, but it is
the measure of his interior richness and worth, and as the blossom can
not tell what becomes of the odor which is wafted away from it by every
wind, so no man knows the limit of that influence which constantly and
imperceptibly escapes from his daily life, and goes out far beyond his
conscious knowledge or remotest thought. Influence is a power we exert
over others by our thoughts, words, and actions; by our lives, in short.
It is a silent, a pervading, a magnetic, a most wonderful thing. It
works in inexplicable ways. We neither see nor hear it, yet, consciously
or unconsciously, we exert it.

Your influence is not confined to yourself or to the scene of your
immediate actions; it extends to others, and will reach to succeeding
ages. Future generations will feel the influence of your conduct. We all
of us at times lose sight of this principle, and apparently act on the
assumption that what we do or think or say can affect no one but
ourselves. But we are so connected with the immortal beings around us,
and with those who are to come after us, that we can not avoid exerting
a most important influence over their character and final condition; and
thus, long after we shall be no more—nay, after the world itself shall
be no more—the consequences of our conduct to thousands of our
fellow-men will be nothing less than everlasting destruction or eternal
life. What we do is transacted on a stage of which all in the universe
are spectators. What we say is transmitted in echoes that will never
cease. What we are is influencing and acting on the rest of mankind.
Neutral we can not be. Living we act, and dead we speak; and the whole
universe is the mighty company, forever looking and listening; and all
nature the tablets, forever recording the words, the deeds, the
thoughts, the passions of mankind.

It is a high, solemn, almost awful thought for every individual man,
that his earthly influence, which has a commencement, will never through
all ages have an end! What is done, is done—has already blended itself
with the boundless, ever-living, ever-working universe, and will work
there for good or evil, openly or secretly, throughout all time. The
life of every man is as the well-spring of a stream, whose small
beginnings are, indeed, plain to all, but whose course and destination,
as it winds through the expanse of infinite years, only the Omniscient
can discern. God has written upon the flower that sweetens the air, upon
the breeze that rocks the flower upon its stem, upon the rain-drop that
swells the mighty river, upon the dew-drops that refresh the smallest
sprig of moss that rears its head in the desert, upon the ocean that
rocks every swimmer in its channel, upon every penciled shell that
sleeps in the caverns of the deep, as well as upon the mighty sun which
warms and cheers the millions of creatures that live in its light,—upon
all he has written, "None of us liveth to himself."

The babe that perished on the bosom of its mother, like a flower that
bowed its head and drooped amid the death-frosts of time,—that babe,
not only in its image, but in its influence, still lives and speaks in
the chambers of the mother's heart. The friend with whom we took sweet
counsel is removed visibly from the outward eye; but the lessons that he
taught, the grand sentiments that he uttered, the deeds of generosity by
which he was characterized, the moral lineaments and likeness of the
man, still survive, and appear in the silence of eventide, and on the
tablets of memory, and in the light of noon and dewy eve; and, though
dead, he yet speaketh eloquently and in the midst of us. Every thing
leaves a history and an influence. The pebble, as well as the planet,
goes attended by its shadow. The rolling rock leaves its scratches on
the mountains, the river its channel in the soil, the animal its bones
in the stratum, the fern and leaf their modest epitaph in the coal. The
falling drop marks its sculpture in the sand or the stone. Not a foot
steps into the snow or along the ground but prints, in characters more
or less lasting, a map of its march. Every act of man inscribes itself
in the memories of its fellows, and in his own manners and face. The air
is full of sounds, the sky of tokens; the ground is all memoranda and
signatures, and every object covered over with hints which speak to the
intelligent.

The sun sets beyond the western hills, but the trail of light he leaves
behind him guides the pilgrim to his distant home. The tree falls in the
forest; but in the lapse of ages it is turned into coal, and our fires
burn now the brighter because it grew and fell. The coral insect dies;
but the reef it raised breaks the surge on the shores of great
continents, or has formed an isle on the bosom of the ocean, to wave
with harvests for the good of man. We live and we die, but the good or
evil that we do lives after us, and is not "buried with our bones."

The career of great men remains an enduring monument of human energy.
The man dies and disappears; but the thoughts and acts survive and leave
an indelible stamp on his race. And thus the spirit of his life is
prolonged, and thus perpetuated, molding the thought and will, and
thereby contributing to form the character of the future. It is the men
who advance in the highest and best directions who are the true beacons
of human progress. They are as lights set upon a hill, illuminating the
moral atmosphere around them; and the light of their spirit continues to
shine upon all succeeding generations. The golden words that good men
have uttered, the examples they have set, live through all time; they
pass into the thoughts and hearts of their successors, help them on the
road of life, and often console them in the hour of death. They live a
universal life, speak to us from their graves, and beckon us on in the
paths which they trod. Their example is still with us, to guide, to
influence, and to direct us. Nobility of character is a perpetual
bequest, living from age to age, and constantly tending to reproduce its
like.

It is what man _was_ that lives and acts after him. What he said sounds
along the years like voices amid the mountain gorges, and what he did is
repeated after him in ever multiplying and never ceasing reverberations.
Every man has left behind him influences for good or evil that will
never exhaust themselves. The sphere in which he acts may be small or it
may be great, it may be his fireside or it may be a kingdom, a village
or a great nation, it may be a parish or broad Europe—but act he does,
ceaselessly and forever. His friends, his family, his successors in
office, his relatives are all receptive of an influence, a moral
influence, which he has transmitted to mankind—either a blessing which
will repeat itself in showers of benediction, or a curse which will
multiply itself in ever-accumulating evil.

We see not in life the end of human actions. Their influence never dies.
In ever-widening circles it reaches beyond the grave. Death removes us
from this to an eternal world. Every morning when we go forth we lay the
molding hand on our destiny, and every evening when we have done, we
have left a deathless impress on eternity. "We touch not a wire but that
it vibrates to God."

Since we all have a personal influence, and our words and actions leave
a well-nigh indelible trace, it is our duty to make that influence as
potential for good as possible. In order to do this you must show
yourself a man among men. It is through the invisible lines which you
are able to attach to the minds with which you are brought into
association that you can influence society in the direction of the
greatest good. You can not move men until you are one of them. They will
not follow you until they have heard your voice, shaken your hand, and
fully learned your principles and your sympathies. It makes no
difference how much you know, nor how much you are capable of doing. You
may pile accomplishments upon acquisitions mountain high; but if you
fail to be a social man, demonstrating to society that your lot is with
the rest, a little child with a song in its mouth and a kiss for all and
a pair of innocent hands to lay upon the knees shall lead more hearts
and change the directions of more lives than you.

A just appreciation of the power of personal influence leads to a sense
of duty resting upon all to see to it that their influence is exerted in
inculcating a proper sense of right in the community in which they live;
to be sure that their weight is constantly cast in the scale of right
against wrong; that they be found furthering all matters of enlightened
public concern. They should as far as possible walk through life as a
band of music moves down the street, flinging out pleasures on every
side through the air to all, far and near, that can listen. Some men
fill the air with their presence and sweetness, as orchards in October
days fill the air with the perfume of ripe fruits. Some women cling to
their own homes like the honeysuckle over the door, yet, like it,
sweeten all the region with the subtle fragrance of their goodness. Such
men and women are trees of righteousness, which are ever dropping
precious fruits around them. Their lives shine like starbeams, or charm
the heart like songs sung upon a holy day.

How great a beauty and blessing it is to hold the royal gifts of the
soul, so that they shall be music to some and fragrance to others, and
life to all! It would be a most worthy object of life to make the power
which we have within us the breath of other men's joys; to scatter
sunshine where only clouds and shadows reign; to fill the atmosphere
where earth's weary toilers must stand with a brightness which they can
not create for themselves, but long for, enjoy, and appreciate. There is
an energy of moral suasion in a good man's life passing the highest
efforts of the orator's genius. The seen but silent beauty of holiness
speaks more eloquently of God and duty than the tongues of men and
angels. Let parents remember this. The best inheritance a parent can
bequeathe to a child is a virtuous example, a legacy of hallowed
remembrance and associations. The beauty of holiness beaming through the
life of a loved relative or friend is more effectual to strengthen such
as do stand in virtue's ways, and raise up those that are bowed down,
than precept or command, entreaty or warning.

Shall our influence be for good or for evil? For good? Then let no act
of ours be such as could lead a fellow mortal astray. It is a terrible
thought that some careless word, uttered it may be in jest, may start
some soul upon the downward road. Oh, it is terrible power that we
have—the power of influence—and it clings to us. We can not shake it
off. It is born with us, and it has grown with our growth and
strengthened with our strength. It speaks, it walks, it moves; it is
powerful in every look of our eye, in every word of our mouth, in every
act of our lives. We can not live to ourselves. We must be either a
light to illumine or a tempest to destroy. We must bear constantly in
mind that there is one record we can not interline—our lives written on
others' hearts. How gladly we would review and write a kind word there,
a generous act here, erase a frown and put in a loving word, a bright
smile, and a tender expression. Harshness would be erased, and
gentleness written. But, alas! what is written is written. Clotho will
not begin anew to spin the threads of life, and our actions go forth
into the world freighted with their burden of good or evil influence.

[Illustration: CHARACTER.]

Character is one of the greatest motive powers in the world. In its
noblest embodiments it exemplifies human nature in its highest forms,
for it exhibits man at his best. It is the corner-stone of individual
greatness—the Doric and splendid column of the majestic structure of a
true and dignified man, who is at once a subject and a king. Character
is to a man what the fly-wheel is to the engine. By the force of its
momentum it carries him through times of temptation and trial; it
steadies him in times of popular excitement and tumult, and exerts a
guiding and controlling influence over his life.

There are trying and perilous circumstances in life which show how
valuable and important a good character is. It is a strong and sure
staff of support when every thing else fails. In the crisis of
temptation, in the battle of life, when the struggle comes either from
within or without, it is our strength, heroism, virtue, and
consistency—our character, in short—which defends and secures our
happiness and honor. And if they fail us in the hour of need—in the
season of danger—all may be irretrievably lost, and nothing left us
except vain regrets and penitential tears.

Character is power, character is influence, and he who has character,
though he may have nothing else, has the means of being eminently
useful, not only to his immediate friends, but to society, to the Church
of God, and to the world. When a person has lost his character all is
lost—all peace of mind, all complacency in himself, are fled forever.
He despises himself; he is despised by his fellow-men. Within is shame
and remorse; without, neglect and reproach. He is of necessity a
miserable and useless man, and he is so even though he be clad in purple
and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day. It is better to be poor;
it is better to be reduced to beggary; it is better to be cast into
prison, or condemned to perpetual slavery than to be destitute of a good
name, or endure the pains and evils of a conscious worthlessness of
character. The value of character is the standard of human progress. The
individual, the community, the nation, tell of their standing, their
advancement, their worth, their true wealth and glory, in the eye of
God, by their estimation of character. That man or nation that lightly
esteems character is low, groveling, and barbarous.

Wherever character is made a secondary object sensualism and crime
prevail. He who would prostitute character to reputation is base. He who
lives for any thing less than character is mean. He who enters upon any
study, pursuit, amusement, pleasure, habit, or course of life, without
considering its effect upon his character is not a trusty or an honest
man. He whose modes of thought, states of feeling, every-day acts,
common language, and whole outward life, are not directed by a wise
reference to their influence upon his character is a man always to be
watched. Just as a man prizes his character so is he.

There is a difference between character and reputation. Character is
what a man is; reputation is what he is thought to be. Character is
within; reputation is without. Character is always real; reputation may
be false. Character is substantial and enduring; reputation may be
vapory and fleeting. Character is at home; reputation is abroad.
Character is in a man's own soul; reputation is in the minds of others.
Character is the solid food of life; reputation is the dessert.
Character is what gives a man value in his own eyes; reputation is what
he is valued at in the eyes of others. Character is his real worth;
reputation is his market price. A man may have a good character and a
bad reputation; or, a man may have a good reputation and a bad
character, as we form our opinion of men from what they appear to be,
and not from what they really are. Most men are more anxious about their
reputation than they are about their character. This is not right. While
every man should endeavor to maintain a good reputation, he should
especially labor to possess a good character. Our true happiness depends
not so much on what is thought of us by others as on what we really are
in ourselves. Men of good character are generally men of good
reputation, but this is not always the case, as the motives and actions
of the best of men are sometimes misunderstood and misrepresented. But
it is important, above every thing, else that we be right and do right,
whether our motives and actions are properly understood and appreciated
or not. Nothing can be so important to any man as the formation and
possession of a good character.

Character is of slow but steady growth, and the smallest child and the
humblest and weakest individual may attain heights that now seem
inaccessible by the constant and patient exercise of just as much moral
power as, from time to time, they possess. The faithful discharge of
daily duty, the simple integrity of purpose and power of life that all
can attain with effort, contribute silently but surely to the building
up of a moral character that knows no limit to its power, no bounds to
its heroism. The influences which operate in the formation of character
are numerous, and however trivial some of them may appear they are not
to be despised. The most powerful forces in nature are those that
operate silently and imperceptibly. This is equally true of those moral
forces which exert the greatest influence on our minds and give
complexion to our character. Among the most powerful are early
impressions, examples, and habits. Early impressions, although they may
appear to be but slight, are the most enduring, and exert a great
influence on life. The tiniest bit of public opinion sown in the minds
of children in private life afterwards issue forth to the world and
become its public opinions, for nations are gathered out of nurseries.
By repetition of acts the character becomes slowly but decidedly formed.
The several acts may seem in themselves trivial, but so are the
continuous acts of daily life.

Our minds are given us, but our characters we make. The full measure of
all the powers necessary to make a man are no more a character than a
handful of seeds is an orchard of fruits. Plant the seeds, and tend them
well, and they will make an orchard. Cultivate the powers, and harmonize
them well, and they will make a noble character. The germ is not the
tree, the acorn is not the oak; neither is the mind a character. God
gives the mind; man makes the character. Mind is the garden; character
is the fruit. Mind is the white page; character is the writing we put on
it. Mind is the metallic plate; character is our engraving thereon. Mind
is the shop, the counting-room; character is our profits on the trade.
Large profits are made from quick sales and small percentage; so great
characters are made by many little acts and efforts. A dollar is
composed of a thousand mills; so is a character of a thousand thoughts
and acts. The secret thought never expressed, the inward indulgence in
imaginary wrong, the lie never told for want of courage, the
licentiousness never indulged in for fear of public rebuke, the
irreverence of the heart, are just as effectual in staining the heart as
though the world knew all about them.

A subtle thing is character, and a constant work is its formation.
Whether it be good or bad, it has been long in its growth and is the
aggregate of millions of little mental acts. A good character is a
precious thing, above rubies, gold, crowns, or kingdoms, and the work of
making it is the noblest labor on earth. A good character is in all
cases the fruit of personal exertion. It is not an inheritance from
parents; it is not created by external advantages; it is no necessary
appendage of birth, wealth, talents, or station; but it is the result of
one's own endeavors. All the variety of minute circumstances which go to
form character are more or less under the control of the individual. Not
a day passes without its discipline, whether for good or for evil. There
is no act, however trivial, but has its train of consequences, as there
is no hair, however small, but casts its shadow.

Not only is character of importance to its possessor as the means of
conferring upon him true dignity and worth, but it exerts an influence
upon the lives of all within its pale, the importance of which can never
be overestimated. It might better be called an effluence; for it is
constantly radiating from a man, and then most of all when he is least
conscious of its emanation. We are molding others wherever we are. Books
are only useful when they are read; sermons are only influential when
they are listened to; but character keeps itself at all times before
men's attention, and its weight is felt by every one who comes within
its sphere.

Other agencies are intermittent, like the revolving light, which, after
a time of brightness, goes out into a period of darkness; but character
is continuous in its operations, and shines with the steady radiance of
a star. A good character is therefore to be carefully maintained for the
sake of others, if possible, more than ourselves. It is a coat of triple
steel, giving security to the wearer, protection to the oppressed, and
inspiring the oppressor with awe. Every man is bound to aim at the
possession of a good character as one of the highest objects of his
life. His very effort to secure it by worthy means will furnish him with
a motive for exertion, and his idea of manhood, in proportion as it is
elevated, will steady and animate his motives. The pursuit of it will
prove no obstacle to the acquisition of wealth or fame; but, on the
contrary, not only is the attainment of a good character an almost
indispensable thing for him who would make his mark in the world, but
such is the nature of character that the control over the acts and
thoughts of an individual, which must be acquired before character can
exhibit inherent strength, conduces, in a very great degree, to the very
condition which produces success.

Character is the grandest thing man can live for; it is to have worth of
soul, wealth of heart, diamond-dust of mind. He who has this aim lives
to be what he ought to be, and to do what duty requires. To him comes
fame, delighted to crown him with her wreaths of honor. Sum it up as we
will, character is the great desideratum of human life. This truth,
sublime in its simplicity and powerful in its beauty, is the highest
lesson of religion, the first that youth should learn, and the last that
age should forget.

[Illustration: PRUDENCE.]

  "Prudence, thou virtue of the mind, by which
  We do consult of all that's good or ill."

Amongst the milder virtues which contribute to round out and perfect
life is to be found Prudence. It is a mild and pleasing quality. It
counsels moderation and guidance by wisdom. It is practical wisdom, and
comes of the cultivated judgment. It has reference in all things to
fitness, to propriety, judging wisely of the right thing to be done and
the right way of doing it. It calculates the means, order, time, and
method of doing. Prudence learns from experience quickened by knowledge.
It seeks to keep the practical path rather than that which, indeed,
promises brilliant results, but takes the traveler along dangerous
precipices and through places where there is a risk of his losing all.

The most brilliant attainments are rendered nugatory for want of
prudence, as the giant deprived of his eyes is only the more exposed by
reason of his enormous strength and stature. Prudence is the perfection
of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life. It is invariably
found in men of good sound sense, and is, indeed, their most shining
quality, giving value as it does to all the rest, sets them to work in
their proper time and places, and turns them to the advantage of the
person who is possessed of them. Without it learning is pedantry and wit
impertinence; virtue itself looks like weakness. The best parts only
qualify a man to be more sprightly in errors and active to his own
principles. Prudence is a quality incompatible with vice, and can never
be effectually enlisted in its cause, and he who deliberately gives
himself over to the power of vice and evil habits can never be said to
be acting according to the dictates of the highest reason, wherein
prudence is always distinguished.

It is difficult to define wherein prudence doth consist, inasmuch as the
rules of prudence in general, like the laws of the stone tablet, are for
the most part prohibitive. "Thou shalt not," is their characteristic
formula. It is easier to state what is forbidden under certain
circumstances than what is required. It is shown in practical every-day
life by thoughtful actions on the thousand petty questions which are
constantly claiming attention. It is hesitating and slow to believe what
is not sanctioned by past experience, and prefers not to run any very
great risks in testing new plans for gaining the great object of life,
preferring the sure to the doubtful, even though the latter may seem to
have many advantages. It recognizes that there is a necessity for a
certain amount of caution in all the transactions of business; hence the
old saying, "Prudent men lock up their motives, letting familiars have a
key to their hearts as to their garden." It weighs long and carefully
the reasons for or against any proposed line of conduct, and calls upon
the will to act only in accordance with the result of such reasoning.

In nothing does prudence display itself more than in relation to the
little affairs of life. There are those who in the confidence of
superior capacities or attainments neglect the common maxims of life.
But this is a fatal delusion, as nothing will supply the want of
prudence in the ordinary vocations of business, no matter how superior
the other qualities. Negligence and irregularity long continued will
make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible. The
merchant may, indeed, win thousands by speculations; but the only sure
way of attaining to fortune, place, or honor is by obedience to
well-known laws of business prudence, which discountenance speculation
unbased on substantial facts.

Such are the vicissitudes of human life that, whatever the calling may
be, scarcely a day passes that does not call upon all to exercise this
quality in some of the common every-day occurrences, as well as in the
unexpected emergencies which fate is constantly presenting to us. The
triumph of its long exercise is to be seen in those moments when to come
at a wrong decision means disastrous defeat, the fatal overthrow of the
hopes of a life-time. It by degrees forms for itself a standard of duty
and propriety, accumulates rules and maxims of conduct, and materials
for reflection and meditation.

The tongue of prudence knows when to speak and when to be silent. It is
not cowardly; it dares to say all that need be said, but it does not
tell all that it knows. It is careful what it speaks, when it speaks,
and to whom it speaks. When you have need of a needle you move your
fingers delicately with a wise caution. Use the same prudence with the
inevitable affairs of life; give attention, and keep yourself from undue
precipitation, otherwise it will fare hardly with you.

[Illustration: TEMPERANCE.]

There is beauty in temperance like that which is portrayed in virtue and
in truth. It is a close ally of both, and, like them, has that
all-pervading essence and quality which chastens the feelings,
invigorates the mind, and displays the perfection of the soul in the
very aspect. Like water from the rill, rain from the cloud, or light
from the heavenly bodies, the thought issues pure from within,
refreshing, unsullied, and radiant. There is no grossness, no dross, no
corruption, for temperance, when effectually realized, is full of
loveliness and joy, and virtue and purity are the lineaments in which it
lives. Temperance is a virtue without pride, and fortune without envy;
the best guardian of youth and support of old age; the preceptor of
reason as well as of religion, and physician of the soul as well as the
body; the tutelar goddess of health and universal medicine of life.

Temperance keeps the senses clear and unembarrassed, and makes them
seize the object with more keenness and satisfaction. It appears with
life in the face and decorum in the person. It gives you the command of
your head, secures you health, and preserves you in a condition for
business. Temperance is a virtue which casts the truest luster upon the
person it is lodged in, and has the most general influence upon all
other particular virtues of any that the soul of man is capable of;
indeed, so general is it that there is hardly any noble quality or
endowment of the mind but must own temperance either for its parent or
its nurse; it is the greatest strengthener and clearer of reason, and
the best preparer of it for religion; it is the sister of prudence and
the handmaid to devotion.

Pleasure has been aptly compared to a sea. Intemperance is a maelstrom
situated in the very center of this great sea. Not one path alone leads
to this gulf of woe; not one only current, as too many have supposed,
hurries down this dark abyss, but all around, on every side, the waters
tend downward. There are a thousand currents leading in. Some, it is
true, are more rapid than others. Some rush in quickly and bear down all
who ride upon their waters to quick and certain ruin. Others glide more
slowly, but none the less surely, to the same end. The streams of
intemperance are legions. The allurements that lead downward are equally
numerous. Every appetite, lust, passion, and feeling holds out various
allurements to intemperate indulgence. There is not a power of the mind,
affection of the heart, nor desire of the body that may not dispose to
some form of intemperance which may injure the physical being or
paralyze the energies of the mind. All forms of intemperance are evil
and destroy some function of mind or body—some member or faculty, the
disease of which spreads inharmony through the whole. The dangers from
this source are imminent and fearful, and spread on every hand.

Temperance conduces to health; indeed, it may be said that health can
only be acquired or maintained by temperance. This is the law primary
and essential which every youth should know, and know by heart. Bodily
pains and aches tell of intemperance in some directions. Pain means
penalty, and penalty means that its sufferer should reform. The most of
our pains are occasioned by intemperance. This is the fruitful mother of
nine-tenths of the diseases that flesh is heir to and the sins that the
soul doth commit. We sin by excess of anger, lust, appetite, affection,
love of gain, authority, or praise. Few, if any, are the sins that grow
not out of intemperance in some form. Intemperance means excess. A thing
is good as long as it is necessary. All beyond necessity, or what is
necessary, is evil. Money is good; more than what is necessary to the
ends of life is evil. Food is good; too much is evil. Light is good; too
much will put out our eyes. Water is good; too much will destroy us.
Heat is good; too much will burn us. The praise of men is good; too much
will ruin us. The love of life is good; too much will make us miserable.
Fear is good; too much hath torment. Prayer is good; too much cheats
labor of its life and is evil. Sympathy is good; too much floods us with
perpetual grief. Reason is good; too much pressed with labor it
dethrones the mind and spreads ruin abroad. Any excess in the use or
activity of a good thing is intemperance and, therefore, evil, and to be
avoided.

Temperance as a virtue dwells in the heart. It consists in a rigid
subjection of every inward feeling and power to the rule of right
reason. He who would be thoroughly temperate must master himself. His
passions must be his subjects obeying his will. From the heart he must
be temperate. He must remember that the intemperance slope is an almost
imperceptible one, and that he may be gliding down it when he dreams of
naught but safety. He must remember, too, that the field of temperance
is a broad one, covering the whole area of life. It is not simply
against one form of appetite, one species of indulgence that he is to
guard, but against all. There are other species of intemperate
indulgence, of which we are all more or less guilty, than indulgence in
drink. Indeed, the indulgence of appetite carries away more victims from
the earth than does drunkenness, and spreads a wider devastation and a
more general blight.

All species of intemperance grow of a want of self-control. To be a
temperance man a man must master himself, must be a brave, noble
conqueror of every enemy within his own bosom. It is no small matter. It
is the masterpiece of human attainments. The laws of temperance can
never be broken with impunity. The excess is committed to-day, but the
effect is experienced to-morrow. The law of nature, invariable in its
operation, is, that penalty shall follow excess. The punishment is mild
at first, but afterwards more and more severe, until, when nature's
warning voice has been unheeded and her punishments disregarded, the
final penalty is death. If an admonitory sign-board were hung out for
the benefit of the young, there should be inscribed upon it in prominent
characters "_no excess_." It is to be remembered that the best
principles, if pushed too far, degenerate into fatal vices. Generosity
is nearly allied to extravagance; charity itself may lead to ruin; the
sternness of justice is but one step removed from the severity of
oppression.

If one would make the most of life he must be temperate in all things.
It is the application of reason to all the daily acts of life. It is the
highest and best form of life that one can attain to. It leads not only
to the greatest happiness, but also to honor and position. By abstaining
from most things it is surprising how many things we enjoy. To establish
thoroughly and widely the principles of temperance we must begin with
the youth. They have a high aspiration to be good and true. They see a
glory in the path of right. Freedom is a word of power in their ears.
Virtue has many charms not only for their hearts, but for their
imaginations. They have health, competency, and happiness. They are
ambitious of every good. When the true principles of temperance are
established in early life and made the controlling power through life,
they insure health, freedom from pain, competency, respectability,
honor, virtue, usefulness, and happiness—all for which true men have or
hope in this life. Happy would it be if they were general and all youths
would practice them. Then would religion assert her mild and gentle
sway, peace plant her olive wreath in every nation, wisdom, divine and
time-honored, shed every-where her glorious light. A race of men and
women, full of rosy health, strong, active, symmetrical, beautiful as
the artist's model: pure, virtuous, wise, affectionate, full of honor
and lofty principles, would grow up into communities and nations, and
make the earth bloom and rejoice in more than Eden gladness. A new
heaven and a new earth would surround us with beauty and arch us over
with glory, for the old would have passed away.

[Illustration: FRUGALITY.]

Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of
Temperance, and the parent of Liberty and Ease. It is synonymous with
economy, and is a sound understanding brought into action. It is
calculation realized; it is the doctrine of proportion educed to
practice. It is foreseeing contingencies and providing against them. Its
other and less reputable sisters are Avarice and Prodigality. She alone
keeps the straight and safe path, while Avarice sneers at her as
profuse, and Prodigality scorns at her as penurious. To the poor she is
indispensable; to those of moderate means she is found the
representative of wisdom. Joined to industry and sobriety, she is a
better outfit to business than a dowry. She conducts her votaries to
competence and honor, while Profuseness is a cruel and crafty demon,
that gradually involves her followers in dependence and debt.

Frugality shineth in her best light when joined to liberality. The first
consists in leaving off superfluous expense; the last is bestowing them
to the benefit of those that need. The first without the last begets
covetousness; the last without the first begets prodigality. There is
ever a golden mean between frugality and stinginess, or closeness. He
that spareth in every thing is an inexcusable niggard; he that spareth
in nothing is an inexcusable madman. The golden mean of frugality is to
spare in what is least necessary, and to lay out more liberally in what
is most required in our several circumstances. It is no man's duty to
deny himself every amusement, every recreation, every comfort, that he
may get rich. It is no man's duty to make an iceberg of himself, and to
deny himself the enjoyment that results from his generous actions,
merely that he may hoard wealth for his heirs to quarrel about. But
there is an economy which is especially commendable in the man who
struggles with poverty, and is every man's duty—an economy which is
consistent with happiness, and which must be practiced if the poor man
would secure independence.

When one is blessed with good sense and fair opportunities, this spirit
of economy is one of the most beneficial of all secular gifts, and takes
high rank among the minor virtues. It is by this mysterious power that
the loaf is multiplied, that using does not waste, that little becomes
much, that scattered fragments grow to unity, and that out of nothing,
or next to nothing, comes the miracle of something. Frugality is not
merely saving, still less parsimony. It is foresight and combination. It
is insight and arrangement. It is a subtle philosophy of things, by
which new uses, new compositions, are discovered. It causes inert things
to labor, useless things to serve our necessities, perishing things to
renew their vigor, and all things to exert themselves for human comfort.

As the acquisition of knowledge depends more upon what a man _remembers_
than upon the quantity of his reading, so the acquisition of property
depends more upon what is _saved_ than upon what is earned. The largest
reservoir, though fed by abundant and living springs, will fail to
supply their owners with water if secret leaking-places are permitted to
drain off their contents. In like manner, though by his skill and energy
a man may convert his business into a flowing Pactolus, ever depositing
its golden sands in his coffers, yet, through the numerous wants of
unfrugal habits, he may live embarrassed and die poor. Economy is the
guardian of property, the good genius whose presence guides the
footsteps of every prosperous and successful man.

Either a man must be content with poverty all his life, or else be
willing to deny himself some luxuries, and save to lay the base of
independence in the future. But if a man defies the future, and spends
all that he earns, whether it be much or little, let him look for lean
and hungry want at some future time; for it will surely come, no matter
what he thinks. To economize and be frugal is absolutely the only way to
get a solid fortune; there is no other certain mode on earth. Those who
shut their eyes and ears to these plain facts will be forever poor.
Fortune does not give away her real and substantial goods. She sells
them to the highest bidder, to the hardest, wisest worker for the boon.
Men never make so fatal a mistake as when they think they are mere
creatures of fate; it is the sheerest folly in the world. Every man may
make or mar his life, whichever he may choose. Fortune is for those who,
by diligence, honesty and frugality, place themselves in a position to
grasp hold of fortune when it appears in view.

Simple industry and thrift will go far towards making any person of
ordinary working faculties comparatively independent in his means.
Almost any working-man may be so, provided he will carefully husband his
resources and watch the little outlets of useless expenditures. A penny
is a very small matter, yet the comfort of thousands of families depends
upon the proper saving and spending of pennies. If a man allows the
little pennies—the results of his hard work—to slip out of his fingers
he will find that his life is little raised above one of mere animal
drudgery.

One way in which true economy is shown consists in living within one's
income. This is the grand element of success in acquiring property. To
carry it out requires resolution, self-denial, self-reliance. But it
must be done, or grinding poverty will accompany you through life. We
urge upon all young men who are just starting in life to make it an
invariable rule to lay aside a certain proportion of their income,