of his little debts at college, has already laid a sure foundation of ill-fortune. Nothing is known so quickly or sticks to a man so long as the reputation of dishonesty. It is the fleck of mildew, which eats and grows blacker and spreads from year to year. Boys are fatuously blind to the lengthening shadow which these faults of sharp dealing and lying in their earliest years throw down their whole future. In a year or two they will be asking for patronage from the public or a chance in the business world, and they will find that in damaging their character they have already squandered their only capital. No merchant would take a boy, even as a porter, into his employ who was not known to be honest. We take it for granted our boys are honest, in the coarser meaning of the term. But there is a finer honesty that enters into a man's nature and lifts him above his fellows. He is no sneak nor sham, neither to his companions, his God, nor even to himself. He does not sham a virtue which he has not; he does not imitate any other man's character; but he tries to go to the bottom of his own to clear it and lift it up. "As the boy begins, so the man will end. The lad who speaks with affectation, and minces foreign tongues that he does not understand at school, will be a weak chromo in character all his life; the boy who cheats his teachers into thinking him devout at chapel will be the man who will make religion a trade, and bring Christianity into contempt; and the boy who wins the highest average by stealing his examination papers will figure some day as a tricky politician. The lad who, whether rich or poor, dull or clever, looks you straight in the eye and keeps his answer inside of the truth, already counts friends who will last all his life, and holds a capital which will bring him in a surer interest than money. "Then get to the bottom of things. You see how it is already as to that. It was the student who was grounded in the grammar that took the Latin prize; it was that slow, steady drudge who practiced firing every day last winter that bagged the most game in the mountains; it is the clerk who studies the specialty of the house in off hours who is to be promoted. Your brilliant, happygo-lucky, hit-or-miss fellow usually turns out the dead weight of the family by forty-five. Don't take anything for granted; get to the bottom of things. Neither be a sham yourself, nor be fooled by shams." No matter how humble the sphere in which you begin independent work, strive to attain perfect efficiency. A hundred years ago, we are told, there lived in the city of Oxford, England, a lad whose business it was to clean the boots of the students in the famous university there. He was poor, but bright and smart. No boy could make a boot shine better than he. He was one of the few young workers, whose rule it was to do everything well; and so he blacked boots well. He earned his daily bread in this wayand the more polish on the boots, the sweeter was his bread. Well, this lad, whose name was George, grew rapidly in favor with the students. His prompt and hearty way of doing things, his industrious habits, and his honest and faithful deeds, won their admiration. They saw in him the promise of a noble man; and so they proposed to teach him a little every day. Eager to learn, George accepted their proposition; and he soon surpassed his teachers by his rapid progress. "A boy who can black boots well, can study well," said one of the students. "Keen as a brier," said another, "and pluck enough to make a hero." But we cannot stop to tell of his patience and perseverancehow he studied and worked each day-how often he laughed and sang when other boys would have cried-how a little knowledge acquired one day made him thirst for more the next. He went on, step by step, just as the song goes, "One step, and then another," until he became a man-a learned and eloquent man, who preached the gospel to admiring thousands. The little bootblack became the renowned pulpit orator, George Whitefield. Prof. David Swing says that "one obstacle in the way of human success lies in the fact that man has so many capabilities that it is difficult to develop them equally from his childhood, and equally difficult to keep them all in active existence in and through mature years. The brute creation enjoys two advantages, not the one only of being guided unerringly by instinct, but that of possessing a nature not subject to many laws. Man has so many powers that he is exposed to a hundred forms of failure, and like a magician dancing among knives which he is throwing around with his own hands, must be upon the alert less some form or second of danger be overlooked. The more complex the machine, the more difficult is its motion-the more easily is it thrown out of repair. As the richness of a soil is often its injury, causing it to send up more weeds and grasses and grains than can thrive well in one place, or to grow a stalk so tall that it breaks too easily under the summer shower, so man's mind suffers from its marvelous collection of desires and powers, and sinks under an overload of activities." If a man finds himself gifted with a multiplicity of capabilities, let him exercise choice, and make the best use of one. Surely a fellow so extraordinarily blessed ought to have sense enough to succeed with some one of his many powers. His trouble will probably be in thinking of himself more highly than he ought to think, imagine that success must be his anyhow, strive for the mastery in no direction, and so prove an idle and useless heap of human clay in a busy and exacting world. Men should be self-reliant, but not conceited. It is easy for some to over-estimate, not only the value of their own work, but the ability by which they accomplish it. Taylor has said, "Nothing appears too great to be grasped by the conceits of selfimportance, or too big for the stomach of vanity." Self-important persons are generally little ones-not in body, but in soul. They are very susceptible of flattery, and are perceptibly affected by titulary honors and external distinctions. They are not the reliable ones, either in the times which try men's souls or in the common routine duties of life. Their thoughts are generally confined within the range of their own interests, and consequently their convictions regarding the welfare of others and the good of society are not likely to be most full and clear. Being easily puffed up, they are liable to be tricked and defeated at critical points of life. Shallowheaded and transparent, they can neither keep their own counsels nor execute far-reaching purposes. In the day of their prosperity they are patronized for the sake of policy, but when adversity comes they are cast off and despised even by their friends. A |